Sutherland Shire Teacher Librarians

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Welcome!

Thanks to Cecilie Yates every few years I get to work with Teacher Librarians from the Sutherland area. This time we’ve organised to meet at Cronulla High School to spend the day looking through strategies particularly suited to the role of the teacher Librarian as the chief Information Manager of most schools.

This set of handouts was provided so that participants don’t have to worry too much about writing down Web addresses during the sessions.  An even more complete set with descriptions of Web 2 tools and advice about CEQ•ALL is also available for download.

After an initial Presentation we’ll move through the following topics with plenty of time to analyse examples and discuss integration.

Web 2.0 Intro?

I’m not sure this is needed with this group, but just in case…

Look to Learn Links

  1. Easy YouTube downloader for Firefox
  2. TubePrompter
  3. or move down the list to WordPress

Online Samples

ClassPortals

WebQuests 2.0

By Tom

By Others

Resources

CEQ•ALL

C E Q • A LL / Seek all!

“Gearing Up”

Managing your Rich Media Links

Thinking Tools

Building your Digital Learning Platform

Choose your Approach

  1. Get a WordPress Blog

WordPress, get started!

Students as ongoing Content Creators

Audio – Podcast

Text – Wikipedia Page

Video – Interviews, Guides, Screencasts?

Maps – Producing Google Map Tours

Cutting Edge-ucators Round-Up

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Welcome Back!

Today is a second face-to-face meeting of my favourite group of “Cutting Edge-ucators.”  It’s been my pleasure to work with these folks for several years and watch their contributions to students and their schools.  Here’s a list to a description of the projects they are currently working on.

Today’s Agenda

Our purpose for today is threefold:

  1. Share what we’ve been up to this year.
  2. Consider publication and conferences
  3. Where-to from here?  try this

WebQuests 2.0 – “Day 3”

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Before we begin, would you like to do a little reading?: The Learning Power of WebQuests

A little history lesson & Background

WebQuests all started with this page posted by Bernie Dodge: Some Thoughts About WebQuests.  I was team-teaching with Bernie in a teacher prep course on creating interdisciplinary units.  I soon began a three year fellowship where the first thing I did was to post the first (non) WebQuest for use outside of our course: Searching for China (version 0.9).  This was, “good, but not a WebQuest.”  Why? A few years later it became this updated version of Searching for China.

First Impressions

  1. Here’s a Stixyboard for brainstorming  “What are WebQuests?” – Add a sticky with your name and ideas

Discovery Immersion

Take a short period of time (20 – 30 minutes) to review one or more of the WebQuests below.  Then brainstorm what you consider to be the critical attributes of a good WebQuest.

By Tom

By Others

Return to the  “What are WebQuests?” Stixyboard to update  your ideas

Getting Started

Choose a  Topic

  • Choose an area of the curriculum that has enough richness and complexity to warrant deeper investigation.

Probe for Grey Areas

  • Where do students typically lack sophistication or have misconceptions?

Stakeholders

  • Who has vested interests in the topic?  What are real jobs that people have who would be interested in this?
  • There should be sparks ready to fly between more than a few of the perspectives you’ve listed.  For example, if you have “greenies,” you’d better have developers or manufacturers.

Sample Links

Real World Feedback

  • Who could you get to give students real feedback on their work?  Consider in-person and virtual, peer collaborators and mentors

Authentic Production

  • solutions?  Choose at least one that makes the most sense for your topic and also sings with some excitement for you and your students.
  • What could the students create that makes sense given the time, resources, and topic?  Ad campaigns, videos, slideshows, podcasts, etc. all make sense.
  • Remember to leverage the Group Task so that all roles are required and the outcome must transform information into new understanding.
  • You might consider the Thesis Builder – to generate thesis statements and essay outlines

Possible Questions

  • A WebQuest is guided by a big question – this empowers students to discover their own path through the topic and connect the new learning to what they already know.

Collaborative Checkpoints: add your milestones – Questions, Roles, Tasks, etc.

You’re Ready to Go!

Use the above process to draft together what could become a great WebQuest.  Use your favorite platform like WordPress to develop the WebQuest and tap into all the great Web tools you love to flatten the learning hierarchy so that you can join in on the learning fun and role-model the joy of learning for your students.

If you want to use this approach (or begin a new blog for a WebQuest) you might want to copy/paste this template into a Page on your blog.

Resources

Articles

Pass the Pen – IWB Workshop

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Empowering Primary Learners through IWBs

The Blurb: In a world where rich resources have never been so freely available, our students must get “hands-on” experience making learning choices.  Thus, once teachers have learned the basic tools of the Interactive Whiteboard, the challenge is to use IWBs as a shared learning space with students. Employed as a window to the world, an IWB connects classroom learning with engaging Web 2.0 resources and applications that can enliven classroom practices and “flatten the learning hierarchy.” This session prepares teachers to empower their students to move beyond “technology as entertainment” and to apply the riches of the Web to achieve deep learning and positive habits of mind.

Pedagogical Framework

3 ‘levels of use of IWBs by teachers in their research:

  1. Supported didactic – where the IWB is used to enhance traditional board-focused didactic teaching
  2. Interactive – where the teacher recognizes some of the additional benefits of the technology and endeavours to stimulate interactivity by questioning and involvement of pupils
  3. Enhanced interactive – where the teacher moves from the instructional to the involvement role and uses the technology to stimulate, integrate and develop interactive learning.

Benefits from the Enhanced interactive phase:

  • makes learning more interesting, authentic and relevant to students
  • allows more time for thinking, observation, discussion and analysis
  • increases opportunities for communication and collaboration
  • supports exploration and experimentation by providing immediate visual feedback
  • support multiple forms of conceptual representation

Today’s 3-Ring Circus

pre-requisites:

  • online space
  • IWB Basics

The Productive Circus

  • Students as Teachers
  • Students as Real-time Collaborators
  • Students as ongoing Content Creators

Download the Handout for today

Links – Students as Teachers

Literacy

Numeracy

Mega Sites

Students as Real-time Collaborators – Web 2.0 Tools

Students as ongoing Content Creators

Audio – Podcast

Text – Wikipedia Page

Video – Interviews, Guides, Screencasts?

Maps – Producing Google Map Tours

News Updates – Blogging

IWB Resources

Smartboard

Promethean

The Sites you made!

There’s Data in them thar Kids

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  1. Load this image into Twiddla or another drawing program
  2. Use the Pen and/or the text tool to highlight the parts of the cartoon that make it “funny”
  3. What is the author saying about President Obama and his Secretary of Education?
  4. What does this point make you think or wonder about?

Look to Learn for Early Years

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Welcome!

Look to Learn: Developing a Culture of Inquiry in Early Years’ Classrooms

The Blurb: Experienced teachers know that positive routines form a foundation to classroom learning.  We often use them to manage classroom behaviours and basic skills. However, routines can also be used to engage students in critical thinking and knowledge building, activities often considered beyond the abilities of early years learners.  Participants in this one day session experience what it’s like to “Look to Learn” from the inside and then use and create such activities for their own students. See how rich digital media like blogs, videos, podcasts and images stimulate interest that is then developed through routines that prompt critical and creative thinking.
Here’s a set of materials to guide what you do.

Look to Learn Links

Online Samples

Building your Looking to Learn Platform

Choose your Approach

  1. Easy YouTube downloader for Firefox
  2. TubePrompter
  3. Get a WordPress Blog

If WordPress, then get started!

Visible Thinking Tools

Site to visit Regularly

Manage your Rich Media Links

  • Diigo Social Bookmarks: get the toolbar,  login and start bookmarking!
  • Consider joining or pinching from the Look to Learn Diigo Group
  • Revisit the Look to Learn site to bookmark what you like

Curriculum Mapping @ the AIS Executive Conference

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I’m spending two days at the AIS Executive Conference in Brighton-Le-Sands on Botony Bay, Sydney.  On day one, the committee set up an excellent program featuring John Hattie, Alma Harris and Peter Freebody.  The three keynotes complemented each other and contributed to a solid basis for further discussions.  My interest focused on John Hattie whose book Visible Learning is fast becoming the bible for evidence-based educators.  John made presented an insightful and no holds barred case for what strategies have a greater effect on student achievement.  His bottom-line is that the difference is educators whose attention is on evaluating the effect they have on student learning.  It’s a reminder of the simple wisdom of questions like those put forward by the likes of Rick Dufour:

  • What do we want the students to learn?
  • How do we know when each student has learned it?
  • What do we do when a student experiences difficulty in learning it?

On Day Two, my friend Steven Armstrong (Deputy Head Academic) and I shared Oxley College’s journey so far with Curriculum Mapping.  We offered a “warts and all” tale that begins with a hazy vision of where we want to go and ends (so far) happily with a very successful inspection by the Board of Studies earlier this month.

Our slides are available (+notes page) as well as a handout with a few example maps and template.

AGQTP WebQuests 2.0

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First Impressions

  1. Here’s a Stixyboard for brainstorming  “What are WebQuests?”
  2. Now let’s try Putting the WebQuest Pieces Together (doc)

A little history lesson & Background

WebQuests all started with this page posted by Bernie Dodge: Some Thoughts About WebQuests.  I was team-teaching with Bernie in a teacher prep course on creating interdisciplinary units.  I soon began a three year fellowship where the first thing I did was to post the first (non) WebQuest for use outside of our course: Searching for China (version 0.9).  This was, “good, but not a WebQuest.”  Why? A few years later it became this updated version of Searching for China.

Use the QuestGarden Search to explore others’ WebQuests.  Use the Comments on this post to share good ones that you find.

Sample WebQuests by Tom or Web-and-Flow

Getting Started

One really good way to develop a WebQuest is from a ClassPortal.  Below are the ClassPortals you’ve begun.  Do any of the topics suit a WebQuest?

Reviewing ClassPortals from the group

If you want to use this approach (or begin a new blog for a WebQuest) you might want to copy/paste this template into a Page on your blog.

Guides for your Process

Collaborative Checkpoints: add your milestones – Questions, Roles, Tasks, etc.

Resources

Articles

Be-Dazzling Principals in Melbourne

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The Day

On Monday I’m presenting Day One of a conference for primary principals from the Outer North Western area of Melbourne.  The task for the day is to inspire — to bedazzle —  these leaders with how ICTs can excite learning for themselves, their teachers and students.

Although we will explore plenty of dazzling ICTs, my goal is to do more.  I hope to empower participants with a customisable roadmap, one where they use the exciting aspects of technology to promote a sustainable culture of Real, Rich and Relevant learning in their schools.

Quick Brainstorming

Let’s begin with sharing vision our challenges and goals by getting input via

TypeWith.Me

The Vision

My unhidden agenda is that technology needs to do more than “sex-up” traditional lessons.  Here are examples of how an educator frames a task so that it inspires students to stretch to their best.

What is Dazzling?

Students engaged in autonomous knowledge building. Why?
  • It’s an expression of the Joy of Learning
  • It’s what’s called for by governments & business
  • It makes online access more than amusing ourselves to death
  • It produces better retention of information and promotes higher order thinking, superior outright performance and psychological wellness.

Here are examples:

Share your ideas on Stixy

How do we Nurture this?

Look to Learn

Hands-On!

Do the Dazzling

Web 2.0 Intro

Working with Mater Maria

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Welcome!

I’m delighted to have a whole day to work with the staff of Mater Maria College in the northern beaches area of Sydney.

Here’s a set of materials to guide what you do.

Getting input:TypeWith.Me

I’m still convinced that for a school to successfully implement digital learning four conditions must be addressed. They are:

  1. a place to meet online
  2. a set of Rich Routines to do once they are there
  3. a longer process that develops a renewed understanding of Curriculum – shifting from seat time and product to mastery and performance.
  4. finally, a framework that shifts the ownership and management of learning to students (where is has always belonged)

Online Space

  • Get a WordPress Blog
  • Modify the Blog’s Appearance
  • Settings for success
  • Making a Post – embedding YouTube
  • Creating a Page

Rich Online Routines and Examples

All learners (children and adults) come with a range of abilities and experiences.  They progress at different rates.  This truth is one that the Industrial model to schooling has been struggling with for a century.  Fortunately, in the digital era, this limitation doesn’t exist.  1:1 learners can and do progress at individual paces.  What we need are new classroom routines – beyond “chalk and talk” – that nurture and support individuals to achieve their potential.  The “Edge-ucators Way” is a platform for helping students and teachers move in this direction.

Look to Learn:

ClassPortals:

WebQuests:

CEQ•ALL