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" From Visible Thinking Routines to 5 Modern Learning Routines January 11, 2015 - Featured Carousel, Learning, Sketchnoting, Visible Thinking Routine - no comments I have been a fan of Visible Thinking Routines which were developed by Project Zero from Havard, for a while now. I have used these routines with students, as blogging routines and in professional development workshops."

"Our school's fabulous PE teacher, Claire Arcenas, is bringing blogging to her PE classes. She is incorporating Visual Thinking Routines to help her students become reflective commenters. In a recent planning session, she reminded me of the book Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchard, Mark Church, and Karin Morrison, that I had download but not read yet. We then started diving into the core routines outlined on Visible Thinking from Harvard University."

"This is the second part of the blog post : Visible Thinking in Math Another Math teacher (sixth grade) at Graded, The American School of São Paulo , Laurel Janewicz, has been passionately piloting metacognitive thinking and reflection in her own Math classes. She started out with laying a foundation from the start of the school year. Listen to her students explain the why, how and what next of metacognition in Math class."

"We are fortunate to have a Visible Thinking Routine (VTR) expert at our school. Claire Arcenas, our MS/HS Physical Education teacher, previously a third grade classroom teacher who has done extensive readings and research in experiencing, implementing, embedding VTR in teaching and learning. Recently, she started sharing her experience and reflection on her professional learning blog: Visible Thinking Across Subject Areas. Claire invited me to an 8th grade PE class before a unit on Volleyball skills and allowed me to film her facilitating the VTR called Chalk Talk. She explains the overview of her volleyball unit on her classroom blog post: Can You Dig It?"

"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."

"7th grade Geography teacher, David J. at Graded-The American School of S?o Paulo, was planning an in-depth country data study and interpretation. He decided to allow his students to explore the use of infographics to visually represent the data and compare their findings. He explained to his students: Instead of a focused, issue-based case study, the major project of the quarter will be a comparison of three countries (one from Europe, one from North or South America, and one from Africa or Asia). You will research many categories (citing sources correctly), represent the data using infographics (group collaborative component), and then provide reflection (annotations) on how and why the countries are similar or different on these topics. Additionally, students will write comments comparing their own researched countries' information to the data of other students."

"It was a post titled "Formats for Visual Thinking in the Classroom" from Richard Byrne on Free Technology for Teachers, that prompted me to write this post."

"The picture above makes me smile… I see a group of Kindergarteners thinking, wondering, discussing, testing things out, collaborating, being proud of their independence as they are working with iPads. It was the first time, we "let go" with the iPads. Previously, we had iPad Centers, working with 3-4 students at a time or we took two buddies out of the class to record each other in a separate room. This time, we decided students were ready (I was not so sure, if I was ready) to give each 5/6 year old their own iPad in hand. My eyes were constantly darting across the room, trying to foresee any potential disasters or accidents about to happen in regards to the physical well being of the devices (I am happy to report that there was not one incident!)"

"Recently, I tried to explain to a teacher from another school how we are trying to use iPads BEYOND apps. We have over 100 apps on our school iPads and introduce our students according to age level to a variety of them, but the focus of the use of the devices NEEDS to remain primarily as a tool for: exposing students to skills, characteristic of a "modern learner" critical thinking personal learning transformative learning workflow fluency anytime/anywhere/anyhow creating"

"It speaks directly to the urgency in education to make SHARING part of the literacy fluency (think>experience >reflect>create>share> ) The heart of the quote connects me to Dean Shareski's K-12 Online conference keynote titled "Sharing, the Moral Imperative""

"As I am on a Twitter adventure with our 4th and 5th graders and their teachers @teitelbaumsteph & @shellyzavon, I am breaking down steps to tweeting and the process of learning during Tweeting as a classroom. Ryan Bretag's post Twitter for Thinking Publicly echoed beautifully my thoughts about the "use of Twitter beyond the usual lower level posting assignments, message blasting, or basic discussion forum-like uses.""

"As I am speaking of the benefits of blogging as a professional and student, I sometimes wonder if the word "blogging" is not a word we speak as we talk at cross-purposes with other educators. When I use the word "blogging", I am NOT seeing: technology, a project, an add-on to the curriculum content. When I use the word "blogging", I am seeing: learning how to read and write in digital spaces, the possibility of writing for an authentic global audience, a platform for reflection, investigation, documentation and curation, a platform that supports and amplifies modern skills and literacies. On the tails of Visible Thinking Routines for Blogging, comes this new blog post that wants to make Blogging VISIBLE!"

"Guest post by Silvana Meneghini, Academic Technology Coordinator, Graded- American School of São Paulo. Originally posted on her blog On the Edge. Pedagogical ideas like student centered learning, collaboration, and critical thinking have been around for a long time and are slowly making the way into the classroom. When technology came into play in schools, there was a big focus on technology tools and acquiring tech skills. Nowadays, there is a perception that technology has to be seamless and the main focus is on pedagogy. "

"There is more to blogging with your students than simply creating a blog and starting to copy and paste work, that traditionally was done on a paper journal or worksheet in the classroom, into that digital space. Blogging is about quality and authentic writing in digital spaces with a global audience in mind, observing digital citizenship responsibilities and rights, as one documents, organizes and makes one's learning and thinking visible and searchable."

"Experimenting with sketchnoting as note taking and as visual summaries and slide design has been an area of intense interest for me over the past six months. Completely inapt, as an analog "artist" on paper, the use of a stylus and the iPad Paper app by FiftyThree, have allowed me to experiment with color, form, design, and typography. The process of sketchnoting … has made jotting down ideas, connecting them, visually representing the brainstorming, thoughts and visions as I am creating visuals for blog posts or designing presentation slides, a more metacognitive process … has allowed me to think through a concept, as I am drawing it out ….made me consider options, perspectives of interpretation and points of view more intensely"

"Another glimpse into the classroom! Previous video clips: Socratic Seminar & Backchanneling, Visible Thinking Routine: Chalk Talk, Mystery Skype Call, Collaborate & Curate In the spirit of opening up classroom walls and creating a ripple effect of teaching and learning by sharing ideas, methods, action research and modern literacy upgrades, here is another video clip. You are watching a 7th grade Humanities classroom, led by their teacher David Jorgensen at Graded-The American School of São Paulo. The students are reading The Giver, by Lois Lowry and have been annotating their thoughts as they are reading individual chapters in a Google Doc chart/table, labeled: Observations Inferences Rituals Questions/ Predictions"

"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"

" #BLC14 Building Learning Communities: Sharing My Notes July 20, 2014 - Conferences, Featured Carousel, Sketchnoting - no comments Alan November's Building Learning Communities in Boston is one of my favorite conference. The sheer stimulation to my thinking and creativity, the networking with so many brilliant minds, the sharing of successes and failure and meeting so many new interesting educators is unparallelled. I am sharing my notes in the spirit of enticing readers to dig further into the thoughts and material shared by keynoters and presenters. Show your information literacy by researching the #BLC14 Hashtag, scouting the presenters' individual blogs, Twitter and slideshare accounts, explore some of the links, or using keywords from my sketchnotes (ex. "participatory culture", "making learning visible", "Digital Dualism", etc.) to google further information."

"Do you know what the most common electronic device that college student's possess? According to Joshua Bolkan, a multimedia editor for Campus Technology and The Journal, "85% of college students own laptops while smartphones come in second at 65%". If technology is becoming a common practice among our students, what are we doing as professors to incorporate it into our classrooms? How can students use technology to reflect on their work? How can instructors use technology as a supplement in reading and writing courses? How can technology be used to deepen our student's critical thinking skills? These are questions we should be asking ourselves in a world where technology is paving the way to learning. "

"My children (16, 18, 20) are writing more and more. Their friends do too… Probably not in the way some of you can imagine… nor think of as writing…but nonetheless they are writing. They are texting… 8000 texts (per month) sent and received… Can you imagine probably 5-10 words on average per text…40,000 -80,000 words per month: A collaborative monthly story of their lives in WRITING!"