Category Archives: Connected Learning

Spaces for Learning

I’m seriously thinking about how to incorporate 20% time or a genius hour into my classroom this year. I want to create spaces for student-initiated learning.

The idea of passion-based learning–learning that students are motivated to do for their own reasons–appeals to me because of my experiences following my interests and passions as I learn. I’ve been known to tell people that I’m not a good students (in spite of my advanced degrees). That’s because I’m not particularly interested in doing other people’s assignments unless they are meaningful to me. And yet when I’m interested in something I pursue the topic relentlessly–uncovering information and testing and trying my own approximations as I learn. My photography is an example of passion-based learning.

And then I’m a teacher by profession. That means I give assignments to others to do. And a lot of the time my students do those assignments willingly and really do learn. But at other times they are resistant–for a variety of reasons–like me. And yet, I know that learning is deeper and lasting when it is personally meaningful. I have always worked to create meaningful learning opportunities for my students–and yet, I feel like I can still do better.

So how do I create time for self-initiated learning in a classroom full of kids? What structures will make this opportunity doable? What impact will this passion-based learning have on other learning in the classroom?

And how does being connected increase students’ learning? Can using their blogs amplify their learning experiences? What about opportunities to collaborate with other students in the classroom? Can we bring outside experts in using digital media?

I have a lot to think about and plan for before now and the beginning of the school year in less than a month. If you have ideas or have made this work in your context…please share!

The Silent Hand of Design: August’s Photo-a-Day Journey

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I’m now just a few days away from a full year of participation in photo-a-day. This daily practice of taking intentional photographs and posting each day has had a profound effect on my photography skills–and on my powers of noticing in the world.

For the last few months, my #sdawpphotovoices friends and I have been exploring different prompts to push our creativity. We’ve been inspired by Picasso and Neil Gaiman and last month we spent each week focused on a single color.

I recently came across this Ted Talk by Rob Forbes who talks about design within reach. He takes about 5000 photos each year, capturing interesting design elements.

I love the idea of the silent hand of design uncovered in the photos he takes. Unexpected patterns and textures, angles and curves, symmetry and technology pop up in our everyday lives when we take the time to look. Forbes suggests that the first job of design is to serve a social purpose and that the best design preserves diversity and culture.

For the month of August, let’s focus our photography on design. Each week we will focus on a different element…and at the end of the week we’ll reflect on our photographs and curate our own observations and learning. (I am cross-posting this at SDAWP Voices where Barb will create a link up for us each week)

Take a picture each day that somehow captures the design element and post it to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Flickr using the hashtag #sdawpphotovoices. (You can post anywhere—if you want others to be able to follow your photos, Instagram and Twitter are best!) For more information about posting click here. At the end of each week let’s add an additional challenge: curate your pictures from the week and select one to highlight. You might post it on your blog along with some musings about why you selected it. If you don’t have a blog of your own, you have a couple of choices—you can create a blog (be sure to share it with us by including your blog address in the comments here—or better yet, tweet it using the hashtag #sdawpphotovoices) or you can post to the SDAWP Voices blog.

August 1-4: symmetry

August 4 or 5: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

August 5-11: curves

August 11 or 12: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

August 12-18: angles

August 18 or 19: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

August 19-25: patterns

August 25 or 26: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

August 26-31: repetition

August 31 or September 1: reflect on your week and share your thinking and picture (or collage) on the link up

As an extra invitation, at the end of the month, pick your five favorites to inspire a bit of writing or art or something else you want to make. Be sure to share your creativity and what you discover through the process. I can’t wait to see what our focus on design elements will reveal!

Find Five Friday! Digital Tools

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Today’s post comes from Anna’s invitation at #clmooc to participate in Find Five Friday! (or maybe find five futures). I’ve had a week filled with digital tools…and thinking and conversation related to them. Here’s my curation of five (in no particular order):

iBooks Author

This tool came to light as I worked with a group to find an appropriate platform to serve the resource being developed at the NWP Resource Development Retreat. We wanted something skimmable, flexible enough to hold a variety of digital artifacts (video, pdf files, images, links,…), shareable, editable, and something that looks good. My colleague Beth was able to experiment with iBooks Author and create an early draft of the resource envisioned. Previewing it on the iPad showed it to have many of the features we were looking for. Were there glitches? Of course…and there is a learning curve (which I have not yet mastered!). My biggest disappointment is that you have to use a MAC computer to create with iBooks Author–it isn’t available for creation on the iPad–you can only read (be a consumer) there! I wanted to have my students use this tool. Anyone have other suggestions for a similar tool for use on an iPad?

Thinglink

If you’ve been on my blog before you know that I love iphoneography and love to use photos to convey information. Thinglink is a tool where photos can be tagged with other media including text, video, links… It includes an embed code so thinglinks can be included in other platforms…think Google Earth or your own blog! I learned about this at a CUE Rockstar training this week and then found this great resource from Richard Byrnes at Free Technology 4 Teachers. I’d love to know what you’ve done with this or similar tools!

iPhoneography editing tools guide by Nicole

This is another resource that I learned about at CUE Rockstar. (The presenters developed wonderful pages of linked resources associated with their sessions.) Nicole (who was not the presenter) has put together this amazing pinterest slideshow that highlights not only the tool she uses for editing her photos, but some of her thinking about why she wants to use the tool…and includes samples of her amazing photos. Thanks Vicky for pointing me to this!

Tagging and custom searches for student bloggers by Kevin and Bart

My work with Connected Learning and the clmooc this summer has pushed my thinking about my students’ blogs and how to help them connect with other students for meaningful comments not just from the adults in their lives, but from students all over the world. Bart had some ideas about tagging and embedding the classroom lessons that inspire the blog posts to help students from other places have some context for their responses and interactions. Kevin then suggested the idea of a custom search for student bloggers to connect with other student bloggers with similar interests. Brilliant! (Now to put this into action!)

Bee Bot and Tynker

I’ve been thinking about coding and how I might help my students think about the work behind the digital tools they use. I’d heard about lots of tools/games out there for students–Scratch from MIT and Gamestar Mechanic, for example. And I’d messed around a little… My students have iPads as their classroom device, so I really want to have something they can do with coding on the iPad. Today I learned about a few possibilities to try out. The first one surprised me–it is a little robot-like toy called Bee Bot (not for the iPad–just a little battery powered toy). This little bug can be programmed with up to 40 moves (like the arrow keys on the computer) and can make 90 degree turns. I can think of so many ways this little robot can introduce my students to the fundamentals of coding (and they can create their own games to review other concepts too!).

I also learned about Tynker. It’s not an iPad app–but since it doesn’t rely on flash it will play on the iPad. Tynker is very similar to Scratch with the linking blocks that students arrange to make their actors move on the screen. It’s set up for teachers–you create an account and can follow up on what students accomplish. I’ve only begun to experiment–but I’m excited about the possibilities. I love the way you can see sample projects–and look at the code (in interlocking blocks) behind it! I’d love to know if you have tried any of these tools–how did they work for you and/or your students?

I think that is already 6 (or 7) and I really want to include one more–Touchcast–an iPad app for making video with embedded real time apps (check out the little video link above). More on that to come!

What are your favorite digital tools? What are you currently exploring? How will you use them in the classroom? Teach with them?

Breaking Through #Orange

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I love the challenge of taking and posting a photo every day. I could just take a picture, but the daily/weekly prompts push me to reframe and rethink what I choose to photograph. This month’s challenge–a different color every week–has posed some new considerations for my photography. Red and yellow pushed at my choices and had me thinking about and looking for ways to highlight those colors photographically. I was still finding interesting scenes and objects…at least one each day that “fit” in the color frame for me. This past week was orange and I began to feel that the task was hard. I could find orange–but it seemed so ordinary and overdone–caution cones, warning signs, and flowers. So I photographed a mural, those ever-present cones, some orange furniture, and made a mural collage.

But my photos were feeling boring–I wasn’t inspired. Apparently, somewhere in the process of spending a week focused on a color I had raised the photography bar for myself. I wanted interesting, provocative, artistic shots–and they still needed an orange focus. The orange umbrellas from Friday were a bit better–I like the framing of the shot.

On Saturday serendipity struck and I was given a small orange bead that became the focus for both my photo and a blog post.

And then on Sunday (the last day of orange) I had a breakthrough of sorts. My learning walk gave me the time, space, and focus to tune into the orange around me in interesting ways. I ended up posting these three:

And there were a few others that I haven’t posted yet.

So today begins green. I like taking the opportunity to reflect on the week of photos and think about my growth as a photographer and my thinking about how the constraints of the photo-a-day challenge (self-imposed) support and/or interfere with my creativity. What am I missing when I focus on a theme or prompt? What do I gain when I force myself to “see” through a constrained lens?

I’d love to know what you think!

A Small Orange Bead

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I’m in New York doing some National Writing Project work at a conference center owned by the Girl Scouts of America. Girl Scout memorabilia and history are prominently displayed and there will even be a s’mores reception tomorrow evening! Girl Scouts and scouting generally brings to mind merit badges and good deeds–organizations that encourage appreciation of the outdoors as well as effective stewardship of the home and community. Many women I meet remember their days as Brownies or Girl Scouts with fondness…and who doesn’t anxiously await the annual Girl Scout cookie sale? Ummm…thin mints!

I wasn’t a Girl Scout. I was a Camp Fire Girl. And other than those in my community and my mother who was also a Camp Fire Girl, I seldom run across others who participated in Camp Fire Girls. It doesn’t have the iconic imagery of scouting or the name recognition, although it still exists today as Camp Fire USA, a co-ed organization. But somehow, in my group of NWP colleagues we discovered a common bond–several of us were Camp Fire Girls! This led to reminiscences of our WoHeLo days and the inevitable progression to our collection of beads and how they were sewn (or not) on our ceremonial vests.

So this morning Judy gave me a gift. She pulls a piece of paper and a small baggie out of her purse and hand me the paper and a small orange bead–a Camp Fire Girl honor bead.

Judy and I also spent some time this morning, in the course of our work, talking about play and its value in the learning process–and all the ways it has been pushed out of schools and classrooms. So what does this have to do with Camp Fire Girls, you might ask? Isn’t it an out-of-school organization? It is–and there is still a connection in my way of thinking! My memories of Camp Fire Girls were of sewing, craft projects, field trips, camping trips, cooking out of tin cans, and selling those butter toffee peanuts–we helped each other when we got stuck, when we needed a next bit of information, or someone to show us how. I remember talking and laughing with my friends as we did these things, and I still remember how to do things that I learned in this context.

In my classroom I want this same kind of playfulness and collaboration among my students as they learn. I want them to make meaning from their activity, from useful approximations that are revised and reshaped through iteration after interation–not required “drafts” from teachers, but student-generated improvements that clarify thinking and move closer to the intended end point determined by the students themselves based on their audience and purpose. I want this in classrooms because organizations like the Girl Scouts and Camp Fire USA are not accessible to everyone–and all our kids go to school (or nearly all). I want playfulness and collaboration to be educational values that are practiced in our public schools as a means of becoming literate, thoughtful, problem posing, and problem solving learners.

I think I’ll find a special place for this small orange bead to remind me that we all need places to play and explore as we learn.

Spaces for Learning

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Over at the Connected Learning MOOC on Google+, Terry posted this article by Valerie Strauss from the Washington Post about the struggles dedicated teachers face in our current climate. He also invited us to respond…in a crowdsourced way. Here’s my contribution:

I’ve just spent the past month with twenty educators passionate about improving their teaching and the learning experience of their students. During this time they’ve read extensively, discussed and debated ideas and practices, demonstrated a practice from their own teaching setting in front of these peers, written and responded to writing—personal and professional pieces, all creative—and laughed and cried, dealt with worry and nerves, and invested countless hours because THEY want to be the best educators they can be. Their districts and schools didn’t send them or pay for them—they came because they chose this experience.

Many #si13 discussions take place on these #orange chairs and cubes.

These “third spaces” like writing projects, the CLMOOC, and Twitter have become more and more necessary for educators to thrive in our challenging profession. These are the spaces where teachers experiment, innovate, and most importantly, find support when they feel that our educational system isn’t working for them or for their students. In the face of daunting constraints, teachers like the ones participating in the SDAWP Summer Institute and those making like crazy in the CLMOOC continue to seek out practices that support learners and celebrate the joy and purposes of learning. In these spaces we make sense of our world, we build relationships, we blaze trails for learning for those that feel pinched by constant test prep and narrowing curricula and in doing so we stay the course. Because like Valerie said,

But some teachers are fighting these trends. Teachers believe that education is not just teaching students to pass tests. They believe that education is not just about how to make a living, but also about how to make a life. They believe that school should be a place of joy in learning, not learning in fear. They believe that play, imagination, and creativity have a place in school, just as much as mastering difficult material. In fact, play and mastery go hand in hand. And these teachers are fighting to work harder than ever so they can continue to find ways to be creative in the classroom despite the pressure not to be. These teachers have classrooms you’d love to have your child in.

What kind of classroom or learning spaces do you want for your child, for your students, for yourself? I’d love to hear about your “third spaces” or alternative ways of dealing with the constraints that are strangling the love of learning and passion for teaching.

Connected Learning…a Challenge

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At the San Diego Area Writing Project (SDAWP) we are always looking for ways to learn from each and ways to support each others’ learning in our mission to improve writing instruction for the young people in our area. For a while now we’ve been wanting to create a shared resource of mentor texts that teachers love and have used successfully to teach writing in their classrooms. We’ve thrown a bunch of ideas around about how to do that–and nothing has really stuck.

Enter Barb–SDAWP Teacher Consultant and one of the administrators of our SDAWP Voices blog, the collaborative blog we’ve been experimenting with over the last year. In another part of her life she is an artist with fabric–creating beautiful quilt projects–and maintains a sewing focused blog where she also participates in challenges and contests and blog link-ups. Sharing her experience with textile artists and their social media world is helping us at the SDAWP experiment with new ways to build connections…and learning experiences.

So starting today we’re asking people–everyone is invited–to commit to the 113 Mentor Texts by the End of 2013 challenge. Committing means agreeing to add at least one mentor text that you’ve used to teach writing or used to support your own writing that you would recommend to others. There are lots more details on the SDAWP Voices blog here.

So join us…and please share with your friends and colleagues so we can reach our goal of 113 mentor texts by the end of 2013!