Group items tagged

"There are different ways to hold a conversation. I am using several platforms/methods to hold a conversation with the faculty of the Shore, Church of England Grammar School from Sydney, Australia. Our topic is documenting FOR and AS learning. We are somewhat "flipping" my school site visit (scheduled for next June) and are using several of the below mentioned platforms/methods and resources to start the conversation around documenting for learning, build common vocabulary and understanding and plan for our face to face time together."

"Twitter can be overwhelming, even for a seasoned Twitterer. We use tools, such as Tweetdeck, to help us organize the tweets coming in --we use #hashtags to filter and connect our conversations --we @mention, we RT, we DM, we #FF --we participate in #edchats --we give credit where credit is due --we take notes --we disseminate interesting information to our network --we amplify our voices to engage in conversation with people from around the world Yes, it can be overwhelming to follow a conference Twitter hashtag such as #AASSA15 (Association of American Schools in South America Annual Educators Conference . (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3). You will find a few sample sreenshots of Tweets from the AASSA conference in Curaçao. Unpacked and annotexted to make the value of Twitter as a Professional Development tool, a learning tool visible to the untrained eye."

"I can die happy now :) I have seen learning in the 21st Century modern classroom! The learning just oozes through the cracks of the physical classroom walls. Learning is amplified by the amount of people who are collaborating, participating, communicating and creating. The learning is NOT about the technology tools, but what students can DO with them to learn in new ways. The learning is about an authentic tasks, that allows students to contribute in a individualized and personalized manner to make them realize that their work matters in the real world. It all started out with a conversation between Mike Fisher and me. He had written over 40 children poems and was in the process of wondering what to do with them? I was looking for an authentic task for 9-11 year old students. We felt we had a perfect match! How about getting the students Language Arts and Art teacher involved? The initial idea was to make a unit of poetry come alive, study Mike's poems and visualize the poems by creating illustrations."

"I believe we are on our way of taking a modern classroom learning opportunity and upgrading assessment forms to match new skills and new literacies while not forgetting traditionally assessed ones. We took a classroom Twitter feed (Part One) , looked at the conversation skills students exhibited during the Skype call (Part Two) and now are moving on to looking at "blog post writing" as assessment. Keeping a previously created blogging rubric in mind, we took a closer look at the blog posts written by the 4th and 5th graders during the actual skype call and edited and formatted after the call had ended."

"I am still amazed at the amount of educators, who believe that Twitter holds NO VALUE for their professional learning. Many hold on to the belief that Twitter is a waste of time, used to follow celebrities, listen to gossip and bad hair day complaints. If YOU were able to get past that initial Twitter reputation, diving into the Twittersphere can be scary, OVERWHELMING and participating in this global conversation platform does not necessarily come naturally to everybody."

"The conversation about visible thinking in Math started with one of our teachers at Graded, The American School of São Paulo, Adam Hancock, wanting to know how he could incorporate having students' use their blogfolios in Math class. It seemed natural to have students write for Humanities (Language Arts and Social Studies), but writing did not seem part of what Middle School Math was about. How could "blogging" go beyond taking a digital image of a Math problem on paper or a quiz and writing about "how the student felt about solving the problem or passing the test?"or ask themselves what they could have done better? One of the first steps was to bring more "language" into the Math classroom. In a Skype call with Heidi Hayes Jacobs, she said that Math should be taught more like a foreign language."

"I wanted to take a closer look at the iPad Evaluation I previously blogged about in Evaluating Apps with Transformative Use in Mind. The section of Content and Components deserved a closer look and explanation. You can download the PDF file of the iPad App Evaluation for the Classroom with the following sections of evaluation included: Considerations Content & Components Logistics Fluency Substitution vs Transformation Model (based on SAMR model of Ruben Puentedura and Alan November's work) Evidence of Learning (based on conversation with Stephen Wilmarth) After looking at iPad apps through the lens of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, November's Digital Learning Farm, 21st century Upgrades, let's take a closer look at the content and components of these apps."

"What Do You Have to Lose? was a blog post I wrote 4 years ago… It is a new idea for many classroom teachers/students to move from writing, reading and "doing" work, not only for themselves, supervisors/parents or for a monetary compensation/grade, to share their work openly and freely with others. The idea of putting oneself "out there on the internet" (on a larger scale than the teacher lounge) and publicly "brag" about successes, admit failures, ask for help or document one's learning and teaching process, feels unnatural and even scares many of them. A lot of water has gone under the bridge, a lot has changed in terms of technology… It has been 4 years and my belief in sharing to amplify teaching and learning has grown stronger, even when the work I share gets taken, plagiarized and used for profit by others. I am continuing to make the benefits of documenting (for reflection, metacognition and connection purposes) visible, but the documentation can not be the end all. The next step must be sharing and disseminating that documentation. It is about sharing conversations, resources, model lessons, student work, reflections, innovative ideas, action research, etc. Sharing in service of benefiting the educational community and advancing eduction. Sharing in order to be part of a network that supports each other and and pushes thinking forward. Without individual parts, there is no network. The more parts, the larger and stronger the potential network. In the last few weeks, there have been many examples at Graded, the American School of São Paulo, that show the power of sharing and the ripple effect it created: Teaching others you will never meet Authentic audience Feedback Personal Branding Remix & Added Value Building a Personal Learning Network"

"Many times, I see eyes glazing over, when I excitedly speak with parents or administrators about blogging, skyping or podcasting with students. Many of them, unfamiliar with the tools, will immediately feel uncomfortable. Some will automatically and immediately steer the conversation back to what they know: What about learning the basics, like reading, writing, math and science? I usually try to explain and emphasize, that these skills are precisely what are being taught. "

"Alan November tours his hometown of Marblehead, MA and comments on the historical global vision of his community. Alan challenges us to think about the emerging role of "student as contributor" and to globalize our curriculum by linking students with authentic audiences from around the world. "

"A couple of days, Dan McCabe mentioned me in a Tweet… I took a look at the conversation preceding the "challenge" to "sketch it". "