Why Digital Literacy and Learning Spaces belong together.

"The teacher no longer needs to be the holder of information...but rather can become a co-learner..."

When we reenvision our spaces together, what do we learn together?

You may have seen a few posts documenting this year's experimentation and thinking around learning spaces in this post, this post, this episode or this one. Like all aspects of doing what we do well as educators, that journey is multi-faceted, ongoing, and collaborative.

Where does Digital Literacy fit in?

Everywhere.  As our digital tools continue to enable more self-directed, collaborative, and authentic learning experiences, our physical spaces need to evolve with that shift.  Consider the changes you've seen in airports, banks, and movie theatres: technology has changed the way those spaces are streamlined and structured.  So what might that mean for your room?  

Spaces which allow for collaboration and independent inquiry

Spaces which value choice and independence

Spaces which direct learners to our understanding of Creative Commons

All signage custom made for the theme using The Noun Project for support

How does a shift in our learning space design shift our thinking about online spaces?

With better online spaces, we are able to better preserve, share and curate resources.  How often do we post something with size font 12 writing to a wall--rendering it visible only to those directly in front of it, and only when they are in the physical space.
Which resources are better presented through our college's digital tools? 
And to what extent do our digital tools better allow us to generate an ongoing dialogue with those resources with our learners?  
Additionally, which physical resources can we provide access to in our digital spaces?

When we worked with Georgina to revamp her room,  the signage was intentionally organized to be readily accessible to students regardless of their location (see these IBDP Psychology provocations linked to her new room theme #pathways). That slide deck is now accessible to students even after they graduate.  It makes use of open use images, and can easily be shared with DP Psychology teachers outside of the college for feedback and future exchange (in just three days it has been viewed 35 times).

Can a classroom revamp remind us of the power of networked learning?

When looking to remodel Louie's Chemistry classroom, we wanted to be able to use a few amazing images we found online.  Via Twitter, we contacted the creator, and he responded...within the hour:

How does a focus on learning spaces remind us of the power of our digital tools?

Whist commonly overlooked as resources, Keynote and Pages have been essential tools of the various classroom revamps happening.  Now, more than ever before it is easier to make signage which perfectly reflects our learning ethos and speaks to the culture of our various classrooms.

Lastly....

These collaborative classroom revamps have reminded us that we can make creative work together. Rethinking classroom design asks us to speak with people across faculties and schools to better understand our different educational philosophies in order to better showcase a physical and digital representation of our passion for all things learning.

Recapping The Learning Spaces Book Club Meeting 1

Our first three texts

Getting spaced out:

We started this journey by hosting consultant Maija Ruokanen (revisit her teachings in this episode of podcast UWCLearn). The DLCs then fanned those fuels as our in house #uwclearn spacebusters. Most recently a cohort of teachers across the college met last Friday to talk about our very first read for the Learning Spaces Book Club.

We started by looking at these questions in school specific teams:

The book club will meet again next August.  In the meantime, we will continue to curate resources on this Flipboard.

What ideas will we return to?

Check out this visual summary (using Canva's infographic-maker tool) of our conversations:

Do you have thoughts on any of our questions?

Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

The Networked Teacher-Learner

What could your portfolio do for your learning?

Starting this May, join a cohort of teachers on campus looking to complete a five-month challenge.

The challenge will ask you to launch and share a portfolio (with the support of your DLCs), and to compose and share one post per month from May until September.

In small teams, you will receive feedback from your peers, and you will be asked to respond to others. What can we learn from one another? Can networking our inquiry build connections across our community and assist in better research curation?

You will have a great deal of choice from a month menu of post provocations. Preview the menu for May here.

Wondering why educators have found portfolio curation a useful endeavor?

Check out this post from George Couros.

What I did not expect though, was how much my own learning would grow.  Writing a blog for me is now something that I feel is necessary for an educator, as it gives me the opportunity to not only reflect on my practice, but also collaborate with others in a more in depth way then sites like Twitter can provide.  I also have had a major shift in my own thinking as I am less focused on the technical aspects of a blog, but the learning implications this type of writing can have on educators and students.-George Couros

If you'd like help getting set up with your portfolio, please ask a DLC.

Sign up for our five-month challenge here.
Anticipate a time requirement of 50-60 minutes per month (includes posting, reading, and commenting).

Introducing the Spacebusters

Looking to revamp your learning space?

If you've been following our Flipboard of resources, or you are just curious about having a fresh look at your classroom, this post is for you. Classroom redesign is not something you need to 'go alone.' What if we saw your space as an opportunity to learn together?

"Teamwork" via Flick taken by Quinn Dombrowski

What does a collaborative classroom makeover involve?

Click here to learn about our process, and listen to this podcast to push your thinking. Consult a coach today to start your audit. DLCs love to think about the ways our digital and physical spaces can come together.  We'd love to think about that with you, so leave a comment here if you'd like us to schedule an appointment to spacebust with you.

"Stay puft marshmellow man" via Flickr by clement127

Digital Bytes Monday 13th March 2017

	Abstract - Netflix Series Abstract, a fascinating series (free on Netflix right now) takes you into the minds of designers in a range of fields - from shoe design to architecture and everything in between. Perfect for our focus on Learning Spaces.
	World Population History This interactive experience on World Population shows how population growth has changed from 1 C.E. to the projected population in 2050. Watch the video to get an overview, or play with the interactive sliders and overlays to explore themes such as environment, or people and society, or use of fossil fuel emissions
	The New Science of Team Chemistry Are you a Pioneer, a Guardian, a Driver or an Integrator? Each team member is comprised of combinations of those four characteristics, though one or two will likely resonate with you. In the New Science of Team Chemistry, find out how exploring your dominant characteristics and understanding those of your team members, can enable you to work more effectively as a team.

Friday Friendly Advice: Google Slides to co-author an eBook?

Google is great and getting better and better.

Did you know you can change the size of a slide in Google Slides to build an eBook?

STEP ONE: Go to file, and select 'Page Setup'

STEP TWO: select 'custom' and resize your slide

STEP THREE: edit your book, set up a template and share: you can now collaboratively co-author an eBook

While there isn’t an automatic table of contents generator you can build this in yourself.

You can link your table of contents to the slide/page by going to Insert>Link and then simply select the slide number.

If you would like to print a hard copy, remember that you can always save your Google Presentation as a PDF, this option is under FILE.

But wait, there's more...

You don't have to start from scratch.  SlidesCarnival has an amazing assortment of templates, just like this one.

Make a copy of any template, and follow the directions above to resize and off you go.

I need great images, but I find attribution a bit tricky...

Use Pexels--wonderful free to download images, no attribution necessary--and you can modify or edit images as needed (read more on that here).

Here's a sample image from their collection:

Sowing ideas one post at a time

abbyladybug
Pomegranate Seeds
via Flickr

How can we use blogs as fertile fields for ideation?

I do believe that my thinking helps to push that of others.  Sometimes in the way they agree, and sometimes when people disagree.  Opinions and ideas are often formed in what people read and how they connect to it.- George Couros

I've been blogging for almost seven years now.  I've abandoned blogs, started fresh in new spaces, and devoutly followed in the steps of other bloggers.  If you are looking for reasons why students should blog, click here.  If you want to be convinced that you the educator should be blogging, click here or here. This post will focus on the applications for blogging once you've started.  This post might help you revamp your blog, or it might provide you with a few new approaches to learning in the great wide open.  Before we sample that menu, I'd invite you to listen to what some of my former students and colleagues had to say about blogging (just 5 months into the process):

---

You have all the innovation you need right there in your room" John Spencer (full video here)

1. Map out your menu

Be sure to include options for a wide variety of thinkers.  Here is a sample menu for an English class:

 Here's a sample menu for a Global Perspective's course:

2. Be adaptable:

Remember that we are teaching learners how to engage with a hyper-connected world (more on that here).

Remember that posts are containers. Sometimes my posts contain podcasts. Sometimes they curate tweets. Veer off script, test, trial, experiment.

3. Start and continue conversations:

Connected learning is about linking ideas, and seeing our community as one that values bridges.  A good post will connect us back to learning as well as connect us forward to applications, inquiry, or others.  Posts will formulate questions, and invite more learning in.

Here's a sample comment a 9th grade student left on a 10th grade student's blogpost:

4. Embrace the chaos:

"Failure counts as done. So do mistakes," says The Done Manifesto. Posts can be lists of questions, a curation of post it notes, or a single image looking for someone to 'see, think, wonderfy' it. "Human beings are collectors," says Austin Kleon in this talk, "...an artist's job is to collect things."  Use the blog as a means to preserve ideas, half-formed, partially-formed, fully formed.   As I type, I'm doing just that.  This post is an example of imperfection.  When I click 'publish,' I will share it with my PLN on Twitter and ask for help.

5. Commenting is an art:

If we learn to see ourselves all as 'idea coaches,' and to remember that each comment left on a post is an opportunity to encourage, support, or tease thinking out, we need to make the time to learn how to go about commenting a little bit better.  The art of commenting is every bit as important as the art of blogging. Have a look at this comment left by a 9th grader on this post:

While you may want to develop your own commenting protocols (here's mine), a good simple guide is to have students think over these 'thinking moves,' as a provocation for commenting.

Thinking Moves for Blog commenting - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires;

Has this post planted a seed in your idea garden? 

If you'd like to chat more with a DLC about blogging, just ask.

CrossPosted from Kindling for the Campfire

Visual Note-taking: High School Applications

I read the last post about visual note-taking...but I'm not sure it would work in a high school classroom...

This post is for you.

Thank you to one of our Tech Mentor's: Georgina, for walking us through her first trials of sketchnotes:

If you are interested in support with these techniques, contact a DLC for a subject-specific workshop.

Friendly Friday Tips: Post One for the Year

julochka via Flickr

Every Friday, you can find a 'Friendly Friday Tips,' posts offering guidance in a flash.  For more help, please do see any of the DLC's.

As we get closer to the Google Apps Summit happening at SAS (mark your calendar and get that PD proposal in soon!), the Friendly Friday Tips will focus on all things Google-esque. 

Today's two tips focus on collaboration via Google Docs:

BreakoutEDU: Migration Edition

BreakoutEDU is the brainchild of Google Educator and High School teacher James Sanders. Observing his students playing Escape the Room style video games, he was amazed at how engaged they were and wanted to create that same level of engagement for learning and problem solving during class time.

Enter BreakoutEDU.

James flipped the idea of escaping from a room on its head, instead getting participants to attempt to break into a box with a series of different locks attached. Clues to each lock could be hidden around a classroom, encouraging "critical thinking, teamwork, and complex problem-solving" across a range of content areas.

I first played BreakoutEDU at the Google Apps Summit in Singapore in September, and knew it had a lot of potential, particularly for the development of the traits of the UWCSEA Learner Profile. My MS/HS counterpart Jeff Plaman worked with DT teachers to build Breakout boxes, and we managed to procure a range of locks with the help of Head of Chinese Wendy Liao.

We played one of the pre-existing games with teachers at our Tech Mentor retreat, and have been searching for some opportunities to create games in the primary school ever since. Grade 3's unit on Migration gave us the perfect opportunity.

G3 teachers & TAs playing the Migration Breakout

Grade 3 Tech mentor Mike Bowden and Unit of Study mentor Kim Duffy worked with Jeff and me to design a game to help G3 students develop collaborative group work skills, while also gaining some insight into what it is like for new immigrants to navigate the language and culture of a new location.

We tested the game out on the G3 teachers and teacher assistants (who performed admirably and broke out in the nick of time) before we tried it out on students in Mike's class.

We divided the class into 2 groups of 11, and had 2 facilitators in each class (a teacher and a TA). Aside from the huge level of noise that came from each group (seriously!), we found it hugely successful in that they were thoroughly engaged, motivated and determined to break out.

One of the most powerful aspects of Breakout is the reflection afterwards. Students learned a lot about how they participated and contributed to their group - not all of it positive! Every child I spoke to wanted to do it again, and each could give insightful reasons as to what they would do differently next time and why.

Of the two groups, one broke out, and one didn't. Sometimes, as teachers, we want to make it so that all groups are successful, but there is learning to be had, whether or not a group gets into the box or not.

If you would like to get started with BreakoutEDU, I'd encourage you to join the BreakoutEDU Facebook community, and explore the existing games on the BreakoutEDU Site. We are also happy to answer any questions or share resources.

Approaches to Learning: Looking for evidence on the OLP

The Online Learning Platform provides our students with opportunities to exercise their approaches to learning: collaboration, communication, and self-management.

If you've got healthy discussion going in the posts on your class feeds, you may wish to check on the contributions of individual students. Here's a few approaches...

Class Stats

You can click on the chart icon on the left of your class and see an overview of each student's participation. You can select different options and see the results such as Units read, posts participated. 

Individual Stats

You can click on any of the member of your OLP classroom and see their profile, selecting the "stats" tab shows you an overview of their activity. 

Filtering the Class feed

The previous statistics provide a pretty blunt measurement of student activity. To get a good grasp on the quality of participation, you can filter the class feed to see participation by individuals. This sorts and highlights the participation by only the selected student allowing you to quickly scan their posts and comments.  

Digital Bytes - 2nd March 2015

This week's Digital Bytes features information on finding global connections for your class, a look at the role of pictures in stimulating real-world problem solving with mathematics, and a tutorial on solving the annoying problem of 'suggested videos' appearing at the end of your embedded YouTube videos.

Date Night with Your Mac

As promised here is a synopsis of what was shown during the Demo Slam at Date Night on Friday November 23, 2012. If you would like to learn more please see the person who presented: 

Phil Meehan share two of his favourite email tools. First up was 'Undo Send' which gives you a 30 second window to 'unsend' an email. You can turn this function on in your Settings menu under 'Labs'. (Undo Send can be found by clicking on the Gmail setting gear, then the Labs tab, search for Undo Send, click enable and save)
Next Phil shared Boomerang For Gmail an add on in Chrome. 

"Boomerang allows you to schedule messages to be sent or returned at a later date. Write a message now, send it whenever, even if you're not online. Track messages to make sure you hear back, and schedule reminders right inside Gmail"

Dave Caleb shared his favourite Mac tips and tricks
- Caffeine keeps your Mac from going to sleep
- Hot Corners - configure the corners on your Mac to do things for you
- Folder Clean Up
- Reflection - an app run on your Mac that allows you to wirelessly project onto your IWB (works like magic!)

Jeff Plaman focused on "finding your voice" during his slam.
- Siri (on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices) allows you to speak and dictate a wide variety of actions. Press and hold the "home" button and Siri can be used to dicate notes, write emails  and search the web. This could be really useful for students who can't type well yet to search for info. 

- Wolfram Alpha is a computational search engine that Siri calls on when you ask technical questions like "What's the boiling point of ethanol?" "How do you find the area of a right triangle?" or "What is the frequency of Middle C?" Wolfram gives answers and mini-lessons that explain the result. 

- iOS 5 (the most recent operating system on iPads etc) has the ability to do dictation. When you open anything where the keyboard pops up, you'll notice that there's a little microphone icon just to the left of the space bar.  Pressing it activates the microphone and you can speak your text and your device will turn in into type. (NOTE: you have to manually enter punctuation) This feature also exists in the newest OS on the Mac, Snow Leopard (you can get upgraded at IT Support).
Jeff showed how you can open a Google doc from your Mac running Snow Leopard, insert a comment and use dictation by pressing the "fn" key twice to speak your comment. 
(You can't actually write into the body of your Google Doc for some reason using dictation on the Mac, but you can do this from an iPad. Just open a Google Doc on your iPad, put the cursor where you like and press the dictation (mic) button and yammer away)

Keri-Lee Beasley shared the cool functions that can be done in Preview:
- get rid of a background on a picture
- adjust the colour of a picture
- annotate on top of a picture

Katie Day rounded off the sharing with a demonstration of Google Reader, managing your settings in Chrome, and using shortcuts to enhance a Google Search. 















We would like to say a special thank you to Jabiz for his inspiring opening about creating on line and off line spaces where our students feel safe and valued. Thank you to everyone who shared and thank you to those of you who came out to spend time with us on a Friday night after a busy week at work. We look forward our next Date Night in the new year.

Rubicon Reserve Wines had some awesome wine for tasting - a special favourite was the Maccari Prosecco. If you would like to learn more you can contact them by email: sales@rubiconreservewines.com

A culture of sharing

share your ideas by Britta Bohlinger on Flickr!

We teach children from an early age to share. Learning to share the sandbox, our favorite toy, or a book is a formative experience that we all go through as we learn to relate to others.
A lot of emphasis is placed on sharing when we are young, but it's just as important, maybe more so, as we grow up and have our own unique perspectives, ideas, and techniques to share.

So, I'd like you consider this question.

"Are you a good sharer?"


This is something that's been on my mind a lot lately as we establish the learning culture of our secondary school. We have more than 50 new teachers this year and will be adding more than 30 more next year as we expand. I think it's critical to demonstrate overtly that we are all learners; students, teachers, and parents alike. Sharing, to me, is an obvious way to do this.

Last week, we opened our Middle School professional learning sessions with seven people, including our Principal, sharing quick (3-5 minute) things that have worked for them and their students. The topics centered around communication, organization, and collaboration with digital tools. I, of course, shared them with the audience by setting up a backchannel on Today's Meet. Here are excerpts (full transcript):

Mike J gives just-in-time feedback using Google Docs "insert comment"Jeff P at 07:31 AM, 19 Sep 2012 via web

Aloni C uses iProcrastinate to stay organized. http://goo.gl/3RwB6

Jeff P at 07:31 AM, 19 Sep 2012 via web 

David S uses weekly announcements to update what's been going on in class.

Jeff P at 07:34 AM, 19 Sep 2012 via web 

Resources I will share- Class blog http://tinyurl.com/cjucecm

Jabiz at 07:36 AM, 19 Sep 2012 via web 

Ian T showing us #social commenting aspect of their site.Jeff P at 07:38 AM, 19 Sep 2012 via web

Martin S showing us how his students are "writing the textbook" as they go in Pages.

Jeff P at 07:52 AM, 19 Sep 2012 via web 

This was a great way to start our meeting. It gave everybody a window into what others are doing reinforcing good practice in some cases I'm sure while providing that little seed of an idea to solve nagging issues for others. This sharing primed the pump for professional discussions in teams related to our iLearn goals and how to make them actionable.

I recognize that it's not easy for everyone to share, in public, in small groups of peers even.
I wonder, why don't some people share more? If you're a non-sharer, you probably won't comment on this blog, but maybe you've "seen the light" and have converted to the sharing culture. Is it a lack of confidence in less than perfect ideas or maybe just general introversion? And, the bigger question, if we want to establish a culture of sharing including all stakeholders, what's the best way to go about it?