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…
Category: Learning Teams & Series
2021 Top “15” iPad Apps
Here is our ‘must have’ list of iPad apps. Every attempt was made to bring this list down to apps that are oriented to productivity (DO in the curriculum). All apps of O365 (OneDrive, Word, PowerPoint, Teams, OneNote, Excel) are considered part of the base foundation.
Winter Ponderings
It is the middle of winter and the anticipated snow advisory came but not really. Over the weekend, EdCampBC – Core Competencies organized by Janice Novokowski and Carrie Antoniazzi moved online and this effort was not lost on the participants who attended. It really showed that there are significant positives as more people from all…
Know Your “Why”
Recently we had session 2 of our Communicating Learning via ePortfolios Team. When I wrote up this session to post for the team, it struck me that anyone should be able to see this especially at a time when we’re all focused on assessment, report cards and all the things that come with the process. …
Updates on Learning and Thinking
It’s almost November and there’s certainly a bite in the air – you know winter is just around the corner. Two of our larger projects got off the ground with a blast. ImagineerTech Team focuses on exploring the curriculum and ways to integrate learning technologies that include all students. The redesigned curriculum offers opportunities for…
Happy Autumn
Welcome back to another exciting year of connections, relationships and opportunities to be inspired through learning. If you are like me, you’ve been pondering and sparkling with ideas about how to move the Redesigned Curriculum forward. Sometimes a story unpacks the journey better than talking. So we’ve put together some of the stories from our…
Year in Review
Voices count. So our last words for the summer are from two of our teams: ImagineerTech and ePortfolios. Padlet was used to share this wall of reflections. (Year in Review can also be found here.) Created with Padlet
Moments of Impact – Having Strategic Conversations
Recently, I was thinking about our ePortfolios journey and what stood out in my head was the concept of story – more specifically ‘strategic conversations of story’. These are conversations that matter, not the stuff that hang on fridge doors and then are relegated to the magic box. Strategic conversations engage participants analytically, creatively and…
Dabbling in the New Curriculum
We’ve set sail on a new course, dabbling and unpacking the new curriculum. We have many questions and unknowns. The one thing we do know for sure as collaborative communities, we support each other, we grow together and we learn together. And we’re not afraid to ask questions, really big questions. Feel free to join along as we…
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…
Reflections: An EduStory
It was a month of celebrations, of learning journeys that finished but really only just begun. Our ImagineerTech, pilot ePortfolio and Partners in Inquiry groups gathered for celebrations of caring and sharing. There were shared “aha moments” in implementing an inquiry process and watching it unfold with students. But it was the reflective process that…
App #4 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #4: “I hate Google Docs!” stated a student in an advanced writing class. The teacher being stunned by this emphatic state turned my way with a “now what!” look. After probing, it became clear that this writer liked the thesaurus dictionary in MSWord. A quick introduction to online visual dictionaries opened a whole different world not…
How Do You Communicate?
More than any other initiative we’ve been a part, none have reached the level of activity as our wordpress blogging platform. This pilot grew from humble beginnings with the simple goal of “tell your story”. Our question – what would happen if we gave our people an opportunity to open a window into classrooms or…
Send Fast Information to Class iDevices
You’ve prepared your lesson well, details carefully thought out. While the iPad or iPod/Touches can be used as pickup-and-go device, having a workflow in mind gives a stronger experience. Imagine my “oops” after handing out 25 iPod/Touches, I forgot to set the website URL on the devices so my students could easily launch the site…
Book Love
Book Love by Penny Kittle shares stories on how readers develop depth, stamina and passion. Though written with adolescents in mind, the message is absolutely appropriate for elementary age. She states that the path to difficult reading begins with books that students enjoy. To build capacity for reading requires practice and lots of it…
A Year of Discovery
It’s June and I’m really not sure what happened to this year. The ten months prior have whizzed by and here we are again. I wanted to take this moment to share some reflections of the year and try to put things into perspective. Our Writers Workshop folks grappled with ideas related not only…
It’s All in the Workflow
Maybe this post should have been called “Sanity is Everything”. You’ve decided on an inquiry project that injects elements of learning technologies. Besides knowing what software you’re going to use and booking the lab or equipment, you dive in. Not so fast! These next thinking steps will allow you to experience a successful project [aka…
To Blog Or Not To Blog
Why blog? Your current process of emailing parents or sending written notices home works just fine! Why change you ask. What makes blogging so unique? Blogging accomplishes many goals that cannot be accomplished as well as email, paper notices or student planner comments. Yes, blogging is an easy way to share homework and expectations for projects…
Choosing Meaningful Apps (iDevices)
Thousands of apps come and go in the iTunes Store. Without concerted strategic effort, searching for that “just right app” may feel like a hunt for a needle in a haystack. Even when it is identified “educational”, what does that mean? Upon closer inspection, many of these are nothing more than repetitive practice at…
Learning on a Curve – Learning Tech Inquiry Team
So much to learn – that must have been the thinking bubble of each participant in our Learning Tech Inquiry group. It was a day to use the new technologies (laptops, ipads, software) and get a bit more comfortable. This is what we explored: Start with a bit of brainstorming ideas. We used Padlet (previously known…