Global Collaboration and Community
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June 6 - June 19, 2016This page hosts my progress in the EdTechTeam Online course. As I work my way through the assignments I am recording my journey of learning and discovery.
I am looking forward to this 6 course cohort as a way of developing my network, and learning more about being a great teacher leader! |
1.4 Map with videoWe were to all drop a pin on our location, in a shared Google My Map, and upload our introductory video to it for others to see. I went into the map earlier in the week and there were WAY more pins, when I came back today to upload my video there are only a handful. Sadly, I'm guessing someone deleted a layer on the map. This is just a screenshot of the map as of today... sure wish that I'd taken a screenshot the other day.
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1.6 SlackSlack is a new tool for me. It is a community 'channel' environment were you can communicate with others. Content isn't publicly searchable, so it would be good for PLNs and work sub-committees.
It integrates with other social media that you are already using! It can bring them all together and make communication easier. The whole team can be a part the conversation (and is by default a part of the #general channel), or you can have private channels for smaller or more sensitive information. You can even have private conversations with other members. Documents (images, PDFs, spreadsheets, etc.) can even be shared over channels! I spent a bit of time looking around, joining channels, and reading posts by others. Even made a comment or two myself, and send a Private Message to a fellow Canadian. |
1.7 EdTechTeam Honeycomb
We were first asked to watch two videos about being #FutureReady.
The US is working on making their country future ready and so President Obama talked about how we have to invest in kids the way people invested in him. How students need to have the skills that will allow them to function in the 'new economy'; skills like critical thinking and problem solving. He spoke of how technology needs to be available to every child and we need to choose where the future will take us. This makes me think of our Alberta initiative, that came out many years ago, to push fibre optic cable to all schools, hospitals, public libraries, and government buildings in order to build the best infrastructure possible to take us into the future. Let me tell you from my experiences in my district, it is working! We've never had better Internet access, wifi availability, and with our amazing IT team and support of administration the access to technology that is required to integrate technology well. The second video was meant to be inspirational. A couple of phrases caught my attention; "technology amplifies human potential", and "I am the future, Am I ready?, Are you?" These phrases struck a chord with me because I am seeing in my job how tech is allowing students with learning difficulties to become more able by using everyday tech tools (like ReadWrite for Google) instead of large, expensive tools they would have needed in the past. As a technology coach I am always working with the future, and trying to push teachers out of their comfort zones to be 'ready' themselves! The EdTechTeam also provided us with their comprehensive and holistic approach to school change using the image below. After reading an interview with the CEO, Mark Wagner, we were asked to reflect and share our thoughts. |
My reflection:
The first thing that struck me when readying was how there are so many ways that schools are Future Ready; how different they are in their innovations. Since my job requires me to work at all the schools in my jurisdiction I see this out there. Everything from the most traditional schools/teachers who don't want to change anything to those who push my limits to always be providing them with new challenges. Leadership is to me, in my role, one of the most defining within our schools. If the leader(s) at the school are supportive, 'courageous', open and engaged, their Empowered Teachers are more willing to change! Our district has recently embarked on the Collaborative Response Model (CRM) which is empowering teachers and schools to change the way they do things, collaborate more, and focus directly on the needs of the students to bring on change in the classroom and the staff. By focusing on what the students need and are doing (Student Agency), the schools are beginning to see big changes! Many classrooms are changing in their look and feel, and becoming more Inspiring Spaces as well! With our ever increasing IT access and normalization in the district we are providing the Robust Infrastructure that the staff and students need, to integrate technology in the best ways possible. A number of our schools have gone 1:1 with Chromebooks, all schools have high-speed hardwired and wifi access on multiple networks, and we have a great IT team that takes care of things so they "just work" for the students and teachers. Since the infrastructure is no longer an issue in our district, I find that with 'just in time' PD, and support from our Educational Technologists (myself and one other employee), that some of the classrooms are really starting to integrate technology efficiently, it is no longer just a 'toy'. We recently hosted a Custom Google Summit in our district and the infrastructure just worked! Minimal issues helped make the whole Summit a huge success, with another one booked for next year! I think the area that our district needs to work on the most is the Engaged Community. As Mark said in the article, if the community expects to see things done in a traditional format when they come into the schools then it is hard to make all the other changes necessary. Some of our schools are doing a better job than others at bringing forward change to the community; possibly this is an area where I could be helping out more. My favourite quote from the article is: "We don't need to cram 12 years worth of content into kids anymore because now they have Google. We do need to teach them how to look stuff up, and how to make sense of it, and how to evaluate it and judge it and talk about the literacy, authenticity, and bias of a source. Ultimately, we need to teach them how to solve problems and how to be creative... and how to build." |
1.8 Personal Learning Networks
My Personal/Professional Learning Network (PLN) is global and comes to me from a variety of sources. I learn from people I've met in person at conferences whom have become online connections, Google+ groups, Twitter hashtags that I follow, the SimpleK12.com website, blogs that I follow, courses that I'm constantly taking, Google Summit presenters, etc. My newest is the EdTechTeam #PubPD sessions where teachers get together at a local pub (face-to-face) and share their ideas on Twitter with everyone else who is pubbing it, around the world... fun stuff!
I share with a variety of people. Locally, and face-to-face, I work with the teachers/students in my school division, online through my website that I created for my position (http://pwedtech.weebly.com), a Facebook page I created that is all about ed tech (PWSD Educational Technology), Twitter, Google+, presenting at conferences and teacher conventions... basically any way that I can share my love of ed tech!
PLNs are important in allowing us to continually stretch our minds and inspire us. If I was not connected to folks outside my district I would not be where I am today. As one of the tech leaders in my district it is vital that I keep current and learn from others outside my area. With the ease of access today this is so much easier than it was 15 years ago when I was just becoming a leader in the district; then it was done by a once a year conference in an outside location and a provincial committee of learners who got together F2F to share and learn. Now I can learn daily with the click of a button, in a variety of media formats! I love the 21st century!
PLNs allow us to have the support we need to grow, to fail forward, to get feedback, to expand our thinking, to problem solve. All those wonderful things that we are trying to teach our students to do!
I share with a variety of people. Locally, and face-to-face, I work with the teachers/students in my school division, online through my website that I created for my position (http://pwedtech.weebly.com), a Facebook page I created that is all about ed tech (PWSD Educational Technology), Twitter, Google+, presenting at conferences and teacher conventions... basically any way that I can share my love of ed tech!
PLNs are important in allowing us to continually stretch our minds and inspire us. If I was not connected to folks outside my district I would not be where I am today. As one of the tech leaders in my district it is vital that I keep current and learn from others outside my area. With the ease of access today this is so much easier than it was 15 years ago when I was just becoming a leader in the district; then it was done by a once a year conference in an outside location and a provincial committee of learners who got together F2F to share and learn. Now I can learn daily with the click of a button, in a variety of media formats! I love the 21st century!
PLNs allow us to have the support we need to grow, to fail forward, to get feedback, to expand our thinking, to problem solve. All those wonderful things that we are trying to teach our students to do!
1.10 Twitter
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1.11 Google+ |
Tweet, tweet!
My favourite links from the ones we were provided to check out were: Twitter Infographic for Teachers - I like that it's short and sweet but gives all the basics Guide to Using Twitter in Your Teaching Practice - Thorough, Digital Citizenship side of Twitter, Parent resources Chat Calendar for Education Chats - allows time zone correction, searchable, seems to list them all Tiny Bursts of Learning - great for those who just don't 'get it'! |
Even though I was a Google+ user already I have learned a few new tools that existed within.
1. I finally was able to disable the 50 000 emails that I get from Google+! 2. I learned all about a whole new (to me) area called Collections. I love the sharing ability of them! It's like free curation of topics. |
1.12 & 1.13 Building and Organizing your Personal Learning Network
Making connections in this course is wonderful! Loving how easy it is to find and follow people that have similar interests and needs. The Twitter 'following/followers' just keeps growing and the Google+ circles keep getting bigger. Liking Google+ more since I'm not limited to 140 characters! I talk too much to be limited... hehe.
Organizing my PLN is getting more important as I continue making all these connections. I was using TweetDeck a bit before this course, but I gave it a wonderful clean up and added the columns needed! Since this course started I have added Pocket to my toolkit and have been using it more and more! Can't wait for summer holidays so I can actually find some time to read the stuff I've saved. Would love to find the time to try IFTTT, but I think that's another one for summer or I'll never get the final project done in time.
Organizing my PLN is getting more important as I continue making all these connections. I was using TweetDeck a bit before this course, but I gave it a wonderful clean up and added the columns needed! Since this course started I have added Pocket to my toolkit and have been using it more and more! Can't wait for summer holidays so I can actually find some time to read the stuff I've saved. Would love to find the time to try IFTTT, but I think that's another one for summer or I'll never get the final project done in time.
1.16 Peer Review of Final Project
I did my peer review for Meghann Majdi's project where students solve a complex math problem and share their process/solution on a Google Hangout or screencast (depending on time zones) with others around the world to see if/how others solve the same problem. Sounds like a fun one to me!
1.15 & 1.17 Final Project, Description, and Reflection
When I looked at both of these final two assignments I felt overwhelmed with how I was going to get it all done when I had to work with others online. Thanks to a couple wonderful ladies, we did an amazing job!
I don't believe in teaching Digital Citizenship as a separate topic to students, I feel it should be fully integrated and mentored on a regular basis. I believe in grabbing and creating those teachable moments that stick, instead of teaching a one week unit at the beginning of the year and calling your job done. Because of my opinion on this I was worried about the opinions of potential collaborators; but I struck it rich and got a partner who thinks along the same lines. It was wonderful to build the slide deck and plan the activities with someone who has the same type of role (technology integration) as myself, and believes in the same way of modelling to students. I think everything got spelled the American way in the project, but I can live with that. ;) Thanks to Jen Klein our project is something that I will actually use!
For the Final Collaboration assignment I had absolutely no clue what I wanted to do, so I was very excited to receive a message from a cohort member (Michelle Armstrong) that I had connected to on Google+ about the course and know from outside the course. Even though we were in different Slack groups, we decided to work together. She had a wonderful idea that she had been thinking about for a while but had not had a chance to do; so we went with it. I think that band teachers everywhere would love to do this Google Hangout on Air focused activity.
The concept is that a band teacher would set up a Hangout on Air to broadcast the rehearsal of the band's Music Festival pieces of music. The teacher would send the invitation out to the students' parents as well as send it out on other forms of Social Media. The viewers (adjudicators) of the performance would fill in a short Google Form provided to them as they watch the rehearsal and submit it for the students and teacher to review. As an extra, because the form asks for the location of the adjudicator in the world, the students would then be able to import the data into a Google My Map to see where in the world they were adjudicated from. A fun, global way to get feedback prior to the real day! Click on the screenshot to view the complete document.
Reflection:
All in all I must say that working collaboratively wasn't as difficult as I had imagined. It was important though to have the working Google Document that we both were working in, and leaving each other notes on what had been done. The 'Comment' feature in Docs was a saving grace, as we could ask questions of each other, leave feedback, share links, etc. Since we all seem to really lead different schedules and were rarely in the documents at the same time these tools were vital to making the project work.
Thanks ladies! This was a fun, first kick at the cat, of true global collaboration for me. :)
All in all I must say that working collaboratively wasn't as difficult as I had imagined. It was important though to have the working Google Document that we both were working in, and leaving each other notes on what had been done. The 'Comment' feature in Docs was a saving grace, as we could ask questions of each other, leave feedback, share links, etc. Since we all seem to really lead different schedules and were rarely in the documents at the same time these tools were vital to making the project work.
Thanks ladies! This was a fun, first kick at the cat, of true global collaboration for me. :)