Up PeriSCOPE!

Scanning the Possibilities for a Final Vision (21st Century Learning) Project.
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Module #10 begins...now is the time to consider the Scope for my final project for the LIBE 477 course...was going to intro the ideas by talking about submarine trolling through topics, blah, narrowing the focus through the persiscope, blah, launching torpedos, blah—but, I'm really not a big fan of educational journey metaphors, so I'll just jump right in after letting these pictures stand in for a fleshed out theme:

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3 Creative Commons licensed images courtesy of  1) Tim Moreillon, 2) Marion Doss, and 3) Naval Surface Warriors

In choosing a final vision project, I decided to focus on an exploration of Place-Based Education. The place being British Columbia in the most general sense, and specifically Chilliwack, where I live, and even more specifically on the community of Sardis, where I teach at Sardis Elementary School. 

In most cases, I'll be focusing on Social Studies curriculum. I'll need to seek staff input on how to make other subjects include lessons on the Chilliwack/Sardis area.

In creating Place-Based Education lessons, I want to always be sure to add in these three key components:

A)  Art and design lessonsB)  Field trips out into nature, or to local community resourcesC)  Technology tools for researching, recording, and presenting        learning

The art and design component will include things like guided drawing, painting, drama, photography, page layout discussions, digital collaging, and so on. For field trips, we will ideally choose walking distance destinations (Sardis Park, Stó:lō Nation site) in order to cut down on bussing costs and environmental impact; for trips a little farther out, the goal should be to combine two or three locations into one all-day excursion (Rotary Vedder River Trail, Blue Heron Reserve, Cheam Wetlands). Before, during, and after the field trips, art should be created as a part of the learning process. The technology tools our students could use for learning and presenting include iPads and laptops to access internet research (plus text resources), and various apps such as HaikuDeck, Puppet, Piccollage, iBooks, ThingLink, etc.

   

                       

Things to consider as I move ahead...

Most of my personal teaching and ideas around Place-Based Education are specifically fitting in with the Social Studies curricula for various grades: I should eventually add Science, Math, etc; also look at integration of several subjects within one project.

Build on place-based successes already in my teaching repertoire, learn from and team up with other colleagues already doing PBE (purposefully, or not), and connect with and team up with anyone else interested on staff.

This final project should probably be presented as an iBook or HaikuDeck that links out to examples of Puppets, PicCollages, and ThingLinks showing the use of art/design lessons for place-based units in various subjects. Thus, my presentation becomes a showcase of the types of tools and ideas I'm advocating.

The final project almagamation will need to include references to materials I discovered throughout this course on the topics mentioned throughout this post.

Another think to think about is who I will present this vision for 21st Century learning to (beyond classmates) and how and when I'll do that. As part of my PLN online, with staff, with T-Ls...?

The circular and interconnected thinking process...

Now, in phase three of the course, I'm returning to the roots of my main interests explored at length in phase one of the course....

As usual, I like the big-picture approach, so I had a hard time separating out the different elements of Modules 10, 11, and 12 as I looked ahead--so, I planned them in tandem on paper...a bit of a linear mindmap (I always still rough my ideas out on paper in word doodles no matter how much I incorporate tech tools into my life). This is what it looks like:

Help Myself to Help My Colleagues Find On-line Pro-D

Thoughts Going in 2 (or more) Directions...
Looking for a Focus...
For this week, the Inquiry Blog assignment pulls me in two directions... The first is to focus on a digital "professional collection" in terms of creating a Library Digital Learning Commons website of some sort that houses learning links for teachers (and students), and that contains examples and tutorials on using apps, etc to enhance learning in the classroom (all of which is a goal I'm slowly building towards). The second direction my mind is going in is related to becoming a conduit for connecting fellow teachers to on-line course work as pro-d. Since I know that I mirror colleague curiosity and trepidation about this realm (even though I've liked taking LIBE/LLED courses online), I pushed myself to go exploring in this second direction. So...

The Question to Focus On
How can we as Teacher-Librarians lead the way in teaching, or pointing the way toward, meaningful ICT professional development on-line for our colleagues?

The True Confessions Component

Yikes! A daunting question up above. One which makes me nervous as I feel new to the whole realm of online pro-d myself (beyond UBC T-L courses). I have participated in two math webinars (three years ago) and, truth be told, did not love the format...maybe just because I'm geezerific, maybe because the particular moderator/teacher wasn't as effective as others, maybe because I just wasn't used to it—I'm not sure. 

Similarly, I was part of a group participating in a sort of digital teleconference/webinar (two years ago) with John Mighton at the CISCO building in Vancouver, that gave me a rocky intro into online pro-d: we started nearly half an hour late due various technical difficulties getting synced audio and video. Mighton is the originator of JUMP Math, and is the author of The End of Ignorance, which I had read—and really appreciated—as pro-d to increase my math instruction skills for my grade 4 classes. Watching video footage of his math teaching in the classroom using scaffolded questions and kids scrawling answers on individual whiteboards had transformed my lessons into something I (and the kids) thoroughly enjoyed. [Oddly, I couldn't find the particular videos of Mighton teaching kids that I once viewed; only pieces of them within other videos; I did stop searching after 15 min., though]  I was really looking forward to learning alongside John Mighton, but the tech difficulties were really tedious to sit through.

Getting Over Myself (speaking of ending ignorance...)

However, in the end, it was exceedingly cool to be sort of face-to-face with an educator I respected while he was thousands of kilometres away in Toronto. And do a few tiresome tech difficulties really undermine the amazingness of being able to do that; do they eliminate the benefits of connecting to a personal learning network that would have been impossible not so long ago? No, definitely not. In the end, everything eventually ran smoothly. I was glad to have been a part of it. And with the rapidity of tech advancements in this era, there is every chance that the flaws of a few years ago have already been mitigated...

So...this week, I decided to get over myself, and began to look into what sort of online—preferably free—pro-d is available currently available. I have heard of things like MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), but didn't realize just how many of them were out there! I figure that as a T-L, becoming a portal to such pro-d info for my colleagues has some value: everyone is busy, and so everyone can appreciate a middleman who points out a course of possible interest. And who knows, I just might find something for myself, too! Posted below are a few finds...

A Few Good Finds for Online Pro-D

What I really liked about Class Central (above image) was that it was laid out simply and started with offerings current to the date of searching and expanding out into the future, rather than being yet another list of various MOOCs, etc, that were amazing, but already over. On one level, we could simply send the link out to colleagues to do their own searches through the offerings, or, even better, we could scroll through looking for topics that suit individual staff member interests, or school pro-d goals, and send info about those specific courses.

A site called Edudemic also was useful for online pro-d suggestions using ICT tools. Its "9 Places to Find High-Quality On-line Professional Development" article led me to the TeachersFirst website.

If a colleague was tentatively interested in using blogs, I would definitely send them there; then, once they had chosen a blog tool, I would make sure I learned all about it, send them a video link showing how to set up accounts, and then sit down with them to set it all up together.

TeachersFirst also offers a wide variety of live online pro-d in their "OK2Ask" section (pdf schedule of coming events attached here). The description in the picture here sums them up nicely: 
This site also has an archive of how-to "courses" that walk teachers step-by-step through how to incorporate technology in their teaching. The information is presented in bite-size chunks, which is non-threatening. The interface is relatively low-tech looking, uncluttered, and not full of flashy distractions—perfect for those colleagues nervous but curious about using more tech in class. One particular example: I read through the course called "Blog Basics for the Classroom," and found it to be a great intro.

Another possibility found via Edudemic was the Intel Teach Elements site. I could see a small group of colleagues choosing a self-directed, self-paced course together on a topic of mutual interest. It would especially lend itself to our district's After-School Collaboration Sessions pro-d, where teachers interested in a given topic meet together for four to five sessions throughout the year (and receive two set lieu days in recognition of the time devoted to extra pro-d).

Closing Thoughts

There is an amazing variety of useful coursework to be found out there in the ether...best if we Teacher-Librarians decide to be a guide towards finding it for colleagues.

Besides pointing out the above online courses available to my colleagues, I plan to continue investigating uses for various apps, and suggesting/demonstrating uses for them in my colleagues' teaching. Sometimes teachers come to us wanting support with incorporating tech tools, but if we can anticipate good options and approach them with an idea already fleshed out...well, that tends to get quicker buy-in. Investigating the new curriculum documents and planning ahead with how to help teachers' pro-d transitions--and how to incorporate 21st Century Literacies into that curriculum--is a big goal for this year and next year. I would like to create some grade-by-grade links for teachers showing how to use interactive communication tools to meet curriculum content goals, in much the same way the new curriculum documents provide digital audio/video examples in the "Competency Illustrations" page of the Communication tab, as in these two items:

A)
Blog: Perfect School, which could be used to further support the imagined colleague I mentioned earlier who wants to start using blogs.

B)
Retelling Little Red Riding Hood, which simply shows how using the iPad camera to record students' oral language learning can show not only what they know, but make visible their confidence, their memory strategies, their voice modulation, and so much more--all in a format that can re-played for deeper assessment purposes, or that can be shared with a parent to deepen their understanding of their son/daughter's skills or challenges.

References

BC Ministry of Education,. Competency Illustrations: Retelling Little Red Riding Hood. 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Curriculum.gov.bc.ca,. 'Building Student Success - BC's New Curriculum'. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Curriculum.gov.bc.ca,. 'Communication Profiles: Communication Competency Illustrations: Blog: Perfect School'. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Intel,. 'Intel® Teach Elements'. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Jumpmath.org,. 'JUMP Math :: Home'. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Learning, Class. 'Class Central'. Class Central. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Lepi, Katie. '9 Places To Find Great Online Professional Development'. Edudemic.com. N.p., 2013. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Mighton, John. The End Of Ignorance. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2008. Print.

Ncte.org,. 'NCTE Framework For 21St Century Curriculum And Assessment'. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Teachersfirst.com,. 'Teachersfirst - Ok2ask®: Free Online Professional Development For Teachers'. N.p., 2015. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.

Teachersfirst.com,. 'Teachersfirst: Blog Basics For The Classroom'. Web. 18 Oct. 2015.