Spring is here! We know this from the wacky weather we are having. The buds are growing and colours are popping everywhere and it’s a timely reminder of transitions even in education technologies. There are apps (applications) and then there are “apps”. While all apps are meant to do something, it is not until you…
Category: Blog as Story
Shared Conversations and Communities of Practice
It was an energizing Pro-D on February 28th as we came together virtually with colleagues and friends. Ideas shared and processes unpacked throughout many of the workshops. As we move into March and April we might consider taking deeper dives into those ideas. We have been hard at work developing on-demand videos in a wide…
Set up Green Screen Portable Kit
Here are instructions to set up your Green Screen kit. (Video is also in Burnaby Learning Community Team – Tips, Tutorials, ProD > Files)
Reimagining Learning Spaces
Learning spaces are created anywhere we find opportunity to engage students and staff in possibilities. They may be in a forest, on a walk (eg. “Walking Curriculum”), in a classroom or hallway. Human nature seeks out difference and expect continuity at the same time. It could be anything from looking at a situation in a…
A Culture of Curiosity and Creative Thinking
There’s something quite wonderful about April. You know Spring (March 20th to be precise) has sprung bringing with it warmer, sunnier days. April is National Poetry Month. With that in mind, there are many ways to approach this. Here is an opportunity to consider ‘spoken word poetry’ or ‘poetry slams’. This is a combination of…
Starting Your Blog
These resources support getting started with your new or refreshed sd41 blog. Getting started – > offers a step-by-step guide to get out of the gate Quick Tips – > how to deal with video, audio, images. Sharing Video – OneDrive to Blogs Linking to Images or other media How to embed YouTube videos Complete Resources…
On the Educational Technologies front…
The streets are lined with golden leaves and the air is crisp and clear. It must be November. Hard to believe that we’re well into the middle of term. Quite a few of our Learning Teams and workshop series have started up and I think I’ve visited almost every school site. A short synopsis (especially…
Learning Walks
We are fortunate to live in an area that is surrounded with nature right outside our doorstep. The popularity of using “learning walks” add new elements to our day. I can think of the power of this opportunity in every one of the curricular areas. “What if” we placed devices in the hands of students and…
Catalyst of Curiosity
Ever wonder how ideas move from a tiny germ to something purposefully actionable? It starts with curiosity, or maybe perhaps a niggle or a conversation walking down a hallway. The trick is to balance what we’ve come to understand through experience and the notion of “what if…”. One needs curiosity to activate our “what if…”…
We’ve UPDATED Our WordPress Blogging Platforms
You all know that we’re a tiny bit WordPress crazy for a large number of reasons (too long to list here). And just in case you didn’t know, this includes our classroom blogs, secondary department blogs, library blogs, secondary and some elementary student BlogFolios (ePortfolios), as well as our district blogs. (The school websites, although…
It’s 2018 – Moving Forward
It’s already 22 days into the new year! Recently we moved all classroom blogs and student BlogFolios to a new service allowing for growth over time. It’s been exciting to connect with people from all the team initiatives and be a part of their learning stories. LOOKING AHEAD: As I’ve said before, change is the…
Mid November Reflections – Voices
It’s mid November and the leaves have displayed their Fall colours (either still hanging onto trees or splashed across the landscape). We truly live in a wonderful part of the world. One of our concentrations is to provide a written voice for every student. Six teams of classroom and LSS/ELL partnerships from six schools launched,…
Happy Summer – Happy 150th Canada
On behalf of our Learning Technologies Team (Lucky, Livia, Janet), we wish you a wonder-filled summer and celebrations for Canada 150th birthday.
Why Blog?
With the many demands on a teacher’s time, what would make a person want to blog? Yes we know all about how a blog or what I prefer to say, “a web presence”, can communicate. That is what a blog can do. However this is too simple of an answer. Here is my current short list…
Student Driven Conversations
Funny thing about data (or I’d like to call them stories) – when students are an intricate part of the conversation, it takes on a whole different meaning. Recently, I was with one of our Joint Teams (LSS/Classroom partners and Learning Technologies) focused on supporting learners with written output challenges. I had shared how we could…
Necessity is … “Making”
A couple of years ago I was working with a teacher doing some audio recording using iPads. The students were creating book trailers to sell their favourite books and were they ever focused in trying to describe their chosen books without really giving anything away. What transpired were constant redo’s as they reviewed their Tellagami‘s…
Happy Summer
As promised, here is a list of books gleaned from our “Summer Reading” survey last week – some gems waiting for you. And from our Learning Technologies Team > we wish you all a great summer of rejuvenation and relaxation with family and friends. Invent to Learn – Gary Stager and Sylvia Libow Martinez Dark…
Summer Reading
We’re coming down to the home stretch in the final days of June. Time to look ahead to those long days of no alarm clocks, watching sunrises and sunsets. Oh did I say put away those alarm clocks? And just in time for summer fun we have a survey for you. We use Gravity Forms…
Outside the Box
Sometimes in our wish to try something new we forget that purpose and pedagogy need to ultimately drive the journey. But dabbling with new technologies and software also has purpose – play. It is through play that we explore what might be possible through new lens. In my last post I shared “change the lens,…
Stories Told: Risk-Taking and Connected Relationships
We left off last year with celebration events for all of our teams. Many things stood out from those gatherings: risk-taking is built on trust, possibility thinking and time to ruminate, ideas start from what we know (a launch page), integration of purposeful technologies requires focused play, assessment is not an afterthought, articulating clear goals…