Monday, November 02, 2015

Digital Discussion

Cross posted at the Yarmouth Student Showcase

All 9th graders participate in 4 sessions about Digital Citizenship before the first quarter ends. We want to help students understand how the core values fit into their online lives. We also want to expose students to appropriate online practices and help them make good choices about their digital lives.

Digital Discussion Website
  1. Kick off: Digital Compass Activity - Students view a scenario about a dilemma. They choose the answer that they think fits. 
  2. Session 1: Digital Footprint - All students participate in this session in small groups of 10. They watch 2 videos, do a reading and then have a discussion. This is followed by a time for reflection.
  3. Session 2: Choice between Multitasking, Privacy, and Digital Overload. They follow the same format as Session 1
  4. Session 3: Choice between Multitasking, Privacy, Digital Overload, Digital Activism, and Be a Creator. They follow the same format as Session 1
  5. Session 4: Students create a product based on one of the sessions they attended. Here's an example of a project.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

#ACTEM15 - Part 1

The ACTEM conference was very special for me this year because, along with Cheryl Oakes, I got to present the John Lunt, Friend of Technology award to our dear friend and educator, Bob Sprankle. What a honor to recognize someone who has been such an amazing educator, learner and collaborator. The award was established by ACTEM in 2006 as a way to recognize individuals that have made a significant contribution to education and technology in Maine.  This recognition is so well deserved! 

The theme of the conference was "Power Me" and the program looked a colorful comic book. This turned out to be a great frame of reference for our recognition. As we presented, Kern Kelly not only recorded, but also had the robot Ivan there, with a cape on! Kern's students designed the cape hanger. Bob could watch from home via the live stream, and at the end, he was able to drive the robot and see some of the people who came to see the presentation.


Mr. S! His superpower is Student Scholars! 

For those of you have yet to meet Bob Sprankle and want the details, all that information can be found at bobsprankle.com or you can google him and in 43 seconds- faster than a speeding bullet 101,000 hits will be displayed.

Bob Sprankle is a pioneer in the world of education technology. Early on, he understood that student voice and technology were a powerful mix for learning. He is passionate about how technology positively impacts students and learning.  

Bob always thought the lines between online and face to face conversations are blurred because meaningful conversation can take place miles apart or face to face. Kern Kelly said “My favorite quote from Bob was when Vicki Davis was speaking at the ACTEM conference and he said how driving with her to the conference that morning, at one point he reached over to turn up the volume to hear her better, suddenly realizing she was actually speaking in the back seat! “

The year Bob co-won the ACTEM teacher of the year, he used his award to purchase audio equipment for podcasting. His students were writing newsletters at the time. Bob wondered if he could make an audio version of those newsletters. Bob saw the opportunity that technology could bring to his students to leverage their learning. He says, “The students just saw that this was part of their work. They had already found purpose to everything they were doing. They had listeners and this was part of learning-people engage with you and carry on the conversation.”

Faster than a speeding nanosecond, the scholars of Room 208 sent breaking news over the airwaves and into homes and classrooms around the world.  These third and fourth graders went from being consumers to producers in lightspeed fashion.   Technology helped Bob amplify their voices from Wells, Maine to a global audience - something that had never been done before. These students went from being consumers of content to producers of multimedia.

Bob’s teaching style supported putting his students in charge of their learning. He believes that students are superheros perfectly capable of creating, editing and producing. He views them as authentic artists and authors whose work is to be valued and shared to a wide audience. For example, the Superhero Scholars blogged poetry and artwork in a safe space created by Bob. He instituted protocols that are still in use in many classrooms around the world today and oh yes, this was all BEFORE GOOGLE.

This was followed by a reading about the Room 208 Reunion by Bob's daughter Zoe. Then Jody, Bob's wife spoke. I'll have the video as soon as it's ready.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Professional Development: Try 1 New Thing

40 minutes during faculty meeting

For my intro, I put together a short page of resources. I asked teachers and staff members to look over the page and experiment. They had 30 minutes to play. I then asked them to choose 1 thing to try for the next month. At the end, I asked for a couple of standouts. Rowcall, Desmos, Lucidchart - (taking a bulleted list and making a mind map), and organizing Google Docs were highlighted as particularly useful. They loved having the choice of tools to explore.

I am going to a follow up at the next meeting and see which tools and addons staff are using. I have long loved the concept of trying just one thing to see if it works with students and then building upon it. Of course, we always want to think of purpose first. 

The timing of our trying one new thing has synced with EdTechTeam's #onenewthing Twitter contest. Maybe teachers will tweet their new learning!

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Monday, September 07, 2015

Professional Development: Creative and Innovation Thinking

We have been working on updating the ways students will demonstrate school wide expectations in our high school. During our back to school inservice, I co-led an activity around Creative and Innovative thinking.


As a YHS student, you will

  • Communicate effectively;
  • Exhibit personal responsibility, civic engagement, and global awareness;
  • Work independently and collaboratively;
  • Demonstrate critical, creative, and innovative thinking;
  • Develop understanding through inquiry, research, and synthesis.

Activity:
  1. Introduce Website
  2. The 30 circles activity
  3. Teachers chose an article from this list and read it.
  4. Group people together by article. Using the Coffee Talk protocol, discuss and gather feedback.
Feedback examples:
  1. "It was difficult to see a rubric on creativity and not think of it as an assessment tool, but rather a guideline to define creativity."
  2. "I appreciated the opportunity to think about how another educator thought about assessing creativity."
  3. "The importance of brainstorming and the many ways that can manifest itself in the classroom. Students still need practice brainstorming and creating their own original ideas. I also was intrigued by the 5 minutes at the start of class spent in silence. I have spent the summer wondering how I would change the start of class and had consider a minute of silence."
  4. "Keep discussing this as a group--Betsy's got some GREAT ideas! We need more discussion and more sharing of ideas, rubrics, examples of assignments, etc. "
  5. "Keep the readings and discussions going!!!!"

Saturday, September 05, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Saturday, August 01, 2015

Weekly Links (weekly)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.