Waterloo Catholic DSB Digital Learning Progress Evaluation

I have been meeting with a group of educators in the Waterloo Catholic DSB to participate in an assessment of our Board's implementation of our 21st Teaching and Learning Blueprint. The focus of our first session was to determine how we can use technology to best support teaching and learning in our Board. 

We used the North-Carolina-Digital-Learning-Progress-Rubric as a framework to reflect on our progress and to inform our next steps. This rubric contains five major areas: Leadership, Professional Learning, Technology & Infrastructure, Content & Instruction, and Data & Assessment. 

We will also give some consideration to methods we can use to include input from students about how we could use technology to promote critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and collaboration (a Board strategic priority). 

Below you will find the following documentation in support of this process;

1) Group ratings in a Google doc for each of the indicators in the ​five major areas: Leadership, Professional Learning, Technology & Infrastructure, Content & Instruction, and Data & Assessment.

2) The Realtime Board where we captured artefacts, evidence and the rationale for the ratings.

3) The Youtube video which captures the collaboration in real time.


During our next session, each group will have some time to present their ratings and for the whole group to discuss the rationale. Subsequently, we will establish priorities and make specific recommendations to move to the next level in each category. We will also discuss the format by which we will be able to obtain additional feedback from educators and students through the use of small, school-based focus groups.

Digital Leadership

ASCD Educational Leadership Conference Day 2

ASCD Educational Leadership Conference Day 1

Innovative Instructional Practices and Leadership

Educational Leadership Portfolio

My values and guiding principles of educational leadership are informed by the image of the leader as shepherd as inspired by Psalm 23 (1). A shepherd leader is a positive role model, one that leads and serves the community by being protective, patient, caring and supportive yet exhibits diligence, courage and resilience when implementing necessary changes. It is a fully integrated leadership philosophy that identifies a way of thinking, doing and being. First, leadership is a way of thinking which involves visualizing the future in order to think and plan ahead and to empower those around you to see and learn more than they would on their own. Leaders also need to move from deep reflection and contemplation to doing, by making decisions in a timely manner that will enable the school to achieve the objectives outlined in the strategic plan. Thirdly, in order to create an environment conducive to growth and well-being, leaders need to see and experience first-hand the perspectives of the different members of their school community.

Leadership is a joint effort that requires interdependence and support from each of the stakeholders and a commitment to the vision outlined in the strategic plan. It is important for an educational leader to discover the needs of the various stakeholders by interacting with them in order to listen to the substance of what people tell them, and to more clearly understand the context of the details that are being shared. Learning how to meet their needs will enable the leader to help the community to reach their full potential. When people provide input, they become more motivated and engaged in their development. This helps to establish an environment of trust, because they know you value their opinion. The more involved they become in implementing the changes, the more responsible they will feel for the results that are achieved, which creates a greater capacity for growth.

Effective principals are both managers and instructional leaders, recognizing that both roles are essential and providing a balance between management and instructional skills (Chell, 2002(2)). One of my main motivations for becoming an educational leader is because I want to help teachers to continue to evolve their instructional practice by embracing 21st century learning approaches and tools to improve student engagement and achievement.  As Toffler states, “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”(3). I think it is important as a school leader and teacher to model how these tools can be used in a responsible way to collaborate and communicate with others to co-develop school plans, share educational resources and best practices, and to use social media to celebrate what is happening in our schools. I find it personally rewarding to work with teachers to facilitate their professional and personal growth through our professional learning cycles and collaborative inquiry. “When members of a team make the results from their common assessments transparent, analyze those results collectively, and discuss which instructional strategies seem most effective based on actual evidence of student learning, they're using the most powerful catalysts for improving instruction”(4).

In order to facilitate the re-examination of current instructional practices, I will need to create an environment where teachers feel safe to take risks in order to find innovative solutions to instructional challenges and to become learning partners with students. As Fullan states, the unplanned digital revolution is creating a push-pull factor; push - school is increasingly boring for students and alienating for teachers, pull - the allure of the digital world (5). By letting teachers’ natural curiosity for learning guide them in their collaborative inquiry and by re-framing failure as iteration I hope to achieve the progress principle so that staff feel motivated, energized and self-efficacious in working towards overcoming the problem of practice they are experiencing in their classrooms. Innovation will be achieved through an iterative process whereby staff continue to evolve their practice as a result of their experiences in implementing their professional learning cycle. Another critical aspect of driving change will be to directly involve students in helping to create a learning environment that is more engaging, authentic, collaborative and inter-connective.

Here is the link to my interactive mind map presentation where I provide an overview of the different areas of the Catholic School-Level Leadership framework that I have been involved in through my role as a 21st Century Learning and IT Consultant. (You may switch to the full-screen mode to start the presentation by clicking on the arrows icon in the bottom left corner or you can use the following navigation controls to interact with individual elements in the mind map).

#OntEdLeaders #ontedlead #leadcpco #WCDSBawesome #on21clearn

1. Wiley: Shepherd Leaders hip: Wisdom for Leaders from ... 2003. 3 Jul. 2015 http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787966339.html

2. Part, A. "Introducing Principals to the Role of Instructional Leadership." 2005. http://www.saskschoolboards.ca/research/leadership/95-14.htm

3. Alvin Toffler Quotes (Author of Future Shock) - Goodreads. 2007. 5 Jul. 2015 http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3030.Alvin_Toffler

4. Educational Leadership:The Principalship:How Do ... - ASCD. 2013. 5 Jul. 2015 http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr13/vol70/num07/How-Do-Principals-Really-Improve-Schools%C2%A2.aspx

5. Fullan, Michael. Stratosphere: Integrating technology, pedagogy, and change knowledge. Pearson Canada, 2013.

Evolve EDU Daily

Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education: Key Strategies for Successful Implementation

This is the presentation I delivered with +Rolland Chidiac-WCDSB at the recent +Google in Education Summits by EdTechTeam in Kitchener, hosted by +Mark W. Carbone and the Waterloo Region District School Board. There were many fantastic presenters and sessions, like the first one I attended last year. At the beginning of my presentation, I reflected on the fact that at last April's summit I had just started to explore the use of these tools to enhance student learning. At that conference I met +Sylvia Duckworth and it led to our implementation of GAFE to facilitate a collaborative story retell project between our two remote classes.

As you will see from the documentation below, a lot can happen in one year. In the Waterloo Catholic District School Board we now have teachers in each of our schools being trained in the use of Chromebooks & Google Apps for Education as we move to a Board-wide implementation.
I created the presentation in +RealtimeBoard which is a free app for education. It is an excellent tool which allows you to create multi-media, interactive mind maps and whiteboards. Follow the instructions below to see the presentation;

• use magnify tools in bottom left corner to zoom in/ out of interactive multi-media mind map
• click & drag the hand to move the board
• click arrow next to title to start presentation mode
• use arrows below documents to navigate contents

You are free to use & adapt any of the Google Docs in the presentation (File > make a copy). They are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

WCDSB Chromebook & Google Apps for Education (GAFE) Project

The rationale, pedagogical, cost and technical considerations for this project;

WCDSB Chromebook & Google Apps for Education Support Resources

WCDSB Chromebook Handbook

WCDSB GAFE Parent Letter

21st Century Project Framework

Chromebook and Google Apps for Education Implementation

This is the documentation I prepared to support our Chromebook and Google Apps for Education implementation. It provides a comprehensive overview for all of our stakeholders, and includes the rationale, pedagogical, cost and technical considerations for this project. Link to the Google Doc version.

21st Century Learning & Teaching Professional Learning Cycle

In the latter part of 2013, I began to meet with teachers from my school board to begin their professional learning cycle on 21st Century Learning & Teaching. The shift from teaching to learning is intentional as the focus of this Professional Learning Cycle (PLC) is on their own learning and professional development. The PLC will follow a collaborative inquiry model, where there will be a lot of flexibility and time for them to explore their own professional growth and development and learn from each other. As Dr. Ann Lieberman (Stanford University) has stated, teachers learn most from other teachers - they are real and have practical experiences that they can trust and can relate to. It is through this exploration that the teachers will discover different ways for their students to become successful in achieving the outcomes they have defined. Each participant will choose a numeracy or literacy focus in line with their school improvement plan in order to achieve the Board system goals in student achievement. 

Over the course of the cycle, teachers will receive a Chromebook and use the tools of the Google Apps for Education suite to facilitate their own learning as they design activities and projects for their students (our rationale for choosing Chromebooks & GAFE). Through the professional learning opportunities provided by this collaborative inquiry, teachers will better understand the changes in instruction that are required and the 21st Century tools that can be used in order to attain higher levels of achievement in students’ literacy and numeracy skills. The added benefit is that they will be able to model 21st century learning for their students so that it becomes a natural part of what happens inside and outside of the classroom.  Adequate time to reflect on these changes and to become familiar with these tools is essential for a successful system-wide implementation. There are all sorts of examples where technology is deployed district-wide without the proper training for teachers or the lead-time to consider the most effective use of these tools. Our goal is to transform learning and teaching in our Board - not to merely map existing teaching practices on to new technology. My role is to facilitate this exploration and to try to model the strategies and tools that they can use with their students. I am leading this PLC as part of my Teacher Learning and Leadership Program project funded by the Ministry of Education. 

We begin with an examination of the key student outcomes identified in our 21st Century Learning & Teaching Blueprint. These outcomes; effective communicator, reflective, creative & holistic thinker, self-directed, responsible life-long learner, and collaborative contributor, are not new. They have been embedded in our Ontario Catholic School Graduate Expectations for many years. While they are not new outcomes, there are many new strategies and tools we can choose to achieve them. I also encourage our teachers to consider the importance of modelling these outcomes for their students and the process for attaining them, in order to promote a 'culture of learning'.

I spend some time reviewing the approaches that are critical to fully leverage 21st century learning and teaching. Otherwise, we are unlikely to see the kind of transformation in educational practice that we are seeking.

1) When we encounter a problem of practice, it is an opportunity for us to re-imagine our teaching. We adopt a 'greenfield approach' where we are not constrained by the previous instructional methods we have employed. When I started teaching French, I taught my students the same way I learned the language in school, by teaching grammar rules and conjugating verbs. This is not a natural way to learn a language and therefore I had very limited success with my students. I started to experiment with new methods and was fortunate enough to observe another teacher that used a revolutionary program with a formalized sign language known as Accelerated Integrative Method (AIM) that helps students to acquire, comprehend and speak new languages with a high degree of fluency and accuracy. I noticed dramatic results with my students as a result of implementing this new program. New possibilities for learning equals new opportunities for teaching.

2) Sometimes we let our fear of making mistakes prevent us from learning new things - as educators we need to step outside of our comfort zone and try new things and new methods. As part of this PLC, teachers have the license and are encouraged to experiment with the Chromebook and the GAFE tools, because when we are in 'beta' we continue to learn and grow. An iterative approach is ingrained in the professional learning cycle - we will all learn from each other and use our experiences (good and bad) to inform our practice. I show teachers the video below because it illustrates how ''re-framing failure as iteration allows students and teachers to thrive''.

I also show the 20% project as an example of what this looks like at the secondary level.

3) As we look to embrace technology and all of the wonderful forms of expression and collaboration that it affords we should be moving from substitution (where technology is a tool that involves no functional change) to modification and re-definition (where technology allows for the significant redesign of tasks that were previously inconceivable. The image below is from the excellent presentation by Jim Cash on ''Technology in the service of learning'' and the SAMR model.

I also refer our teachers to the SAMR Ladder created by Susan Oxnevad and the Arizona Technology Integration Matrix so they can see practical examples of the different ranges of technology integration and characteristics of student engagement. I use the Arizona TIM because their videos are viewable on the Chromebooks (unlike the FCIT ones created in Quicktime).

4) As participants in the PLC they will be invited to become members in variety of communities and Professional or Personal Learning Networks to share best practices and resources in order to grow their knowledge and understanding of these tools by connecting with educators from around the world (Chromebook EDU, Google Apps for Education, Educators on Google +). This is a critical strategy to build capacity within our Board so that the Chromebook and GAFE project is a successful and sustainable implementation. We have also created our own Waterloo Catholic DSB community to facilitate sharing and collaboration across our Board.

The infographic below on the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers Who Use Technology from the edtech blog Always Prepped provides a nice summary of the qualities we are looking to embrace.

  

Future blog posts will focus on the specific activities, tools and strategies that will be used to facilitate this professional learning cycle. I will also outline the methodology that will be used to measure the success of this professional development program.

My previous post on this topic.

A Blueprint for 21st Century Learning and Teaching

Yesterday, with the leadership of our Superintendent of Student Success +David DeSantis, the Waterloo Catholic District School Board began the process of defining the vision and implementation plan for realizing the outcomes in our 21st Century Teaching and Learning Blueprint.

Source :Charles Fadel

Recently, I began reading the book ‘Why’ by Simon Sinek and reflecting on his message and how it relates to our vision for 21st Century Learning and Teaching. We have outlined the ‘what’ (desired student outcomes, sub-committees, focus questions), and the ‘how’ (committee process, report recommendations, tools for achieving student outcomes). For Sinek, it is identifying the ‘why’ that inspires people to act. Below are my thoughts on ‘why’ we should be undertaking this process and 'why it is so important. For me, the ‘why’ is because we need to re-examine the way learning & teaching takes place in our Board (from the instructional strategies and tools and the way we support technology to what our learning spaces will look like).
 
At the recent ECOO conference +Jaime Casap asked a very good question? "Why do classes remain unchanged from the times when we went to school?" Some recent articles; What Does Classroom 2.0 Look Like? (Educators detail how they’re putting a new learning space design paradigm to work in their schools) and Why Disruptive Leadership (a great article about the approach required to change the prevailing mindset) are excellent food for thought.

source: Wendy DeRosa

As we undertake this visioning process, it is an opportunity for us to adopt a ‘greenfield approach’ - a fresh start where we are not constrained by what we have done in the past. It is this new thinking about learning (for students & staff) that will allow us to achieve new possibilities for teaching. I have deliberately placed the focus on the learning as opposed to the teaching, because I think this represents the kind of shift that is required to transform instructional practice. It is the educator learning that can take place through collaborative inquiry in the professional learning cycle that will encourage teachers to adopt new methods for achieving 21st Century outcomes.

While we will share our insights and experiences from our individual classes and schools it is important for us to keep in mind our catholic social teachings about community and the common good, as our decisions will have implications for the entire system.

We will be using Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education to facilitate the collaboration and documentation of the sub-committees and to familiarize ourselves with 21st Century tools and methods. This decision is practical as well as symbolic, as these tools represent a new and different way of working that we can model for our educators and students. I will also be arranging a tour of the communitech hub so that sub-committee members can see 21st Century work in action.

As I meet with each of the sub-committees I will show the video on ‘moonshot thinking’ because I think that it embraces the critical mindset that is necessary for us to achieve exceptional learning outcomes for our students and our educators and to solve the really big challenges that our system faces; equity, anti-bullying and re-thinking 21st learning and teaching to mention a few. Although the video focuses on science & technology I think it is very applicable to the educational context. ‘’We choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’’

I hope the video will also encourage committee members to be open-minded, to dream big and to reinforce that iteration is essential. "Why" is this mindset so important for 21st Century Learning and Teaching, - because the stakes are high. There are several private sector examples of companies that once dominated their markets, that now struggle to succeed because they have failed to adapt to the changes around them and continue to innovate (Kodak, Nortel, Blackberry, and increasingly Microsoft). On the flip-side we have examples like the Perimeter institute and Google that are providing solutions for problems that do not even exist yet (e.g. Google working on a protocol for communicating with Mars).

If we do not take this opportunity to be open-minded about this re-examination and to challenge the status-quo how will we ever know what will be possible in our Board?

Blended Learning Professional Development for Teachers TLLP 2013

I just returned from the planning sessions for the Ministry of Education's Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (TLLP) with my colleague +Rolland Chidiac. In addition to seeing wonderful presentations by Dr. Anne Lieberman (Stanford) and Dr. Carol Campbell (OISE/ UT) on research related to leadership and professional development for teachers, we had a chance to continue working on the project proposal that was accepted by our Board (Waterloo Catholic District School Board ) and the Ministry for 2013-2014, Success for all Students: 21st Century Teaching/Learning using Tablets & A Blended Learning Model.

We are finding that this proposal continues to evolve as we experience new technologies and approaches to teaching and learning that we would like to include in our project. One of the major advantages we have is that our decisions are informed by the insights and experiences Rolland has gained as a result of his work on his current TLLP project. Instead of learning about the project planning process, we are able to focus on the project implementation and the resources we will need to employ to achieve our SMART goals.

There will be 2 significant changes to our project. Previously, my focus group for the blended learning model was to be junior students, but this will now change to include educators in our school board. Teachers that are interested in using blended learning in their classrooms will be invited to attend professional development sessions that will model the same method of delivery (i.e. they will experience blended learning from the perspective of a student - some face to face sessions and some online sessions). The main focus will be to use the same tools and approaches that they could incorporate into their own teaching. Their experiences as a student will help to inform their instructional practice. This is important because educators often lack the personal experience with the new methods and tools of delivery and therefore have a difficult time determining their value and how it would work in their classroom. The instruction in the blended learning course will follow a Collaborative Inquiry model as teachers reflect on their own teaching & learning to design blended learning activities for their own students.

Facilitating professional development for teachers is a passion of mine as I really enjoy the exchange of best practices that are shared between educators that have a variety of experiences. This type of interaction and model for professional development delivery is critical for the adoption of innovative teaching approaches as my rationale below explains.

The key question to address is how can we promote innovation in teaching? The important distinction for the context of our project is that ‘perceived as new’ is relative to the traditional educational practices of a school which consists largely of face to face classes. If blended learning delivery is adopted and used with the existing instructional paradigms, the effect on learning will be negligible and will therefore not represent an innovation in teaching. Ultimately, it is not the technology that matters, but how we design the learning through the technology (Miller). Advances in teaching may result when technology is used as an opportunity discover new ways for achieving learning outcomes. Blended learning can represent both a pedagogical innovation and a channel of communication capable of engaging the learner. Technology enables the instructor to create a different kind of curriculum and to establish a different relationship with the student. The virtual classroom provides a new environment for human interaction and allows the teacher to design learning which can be more student-centered and collaborative and focus on 21st century skills and literacies. Examining Blended Learning Models: Student To Teacher Interactions provides some great examples on how the role of the teacher in a blended learning environment could change.

According to Rogers, innovation is adopted by members within society at different times and at different rates. A steep learning curve is overcome quickly by early adopters who absorb the new skills and instructional paradigms quickly while late adopters acquire this knowledge over a longer time span. Information seems to flow easily from innovators to early adopters. The barrier for diffusion is identified by the gap that occurs between early adopters and early main-stream educators. The size of this gap can be attributed to the level of the inter-connectedness between schools in a school board. Often teachers have connections that do not extend beyond their department, division or school. This limits the reciprocal exchange of teaching methods and content. The number of nodes and connections between educators determines the complexity and richness of the network (Rueter).

Professional development is often seen as a key enabler of innovation in teaching as it may serve to link successful teaching initiatives and the broad expertise available throughout a school board. Such a network would facilitate the sharing of innovative teaching strategies and encourage the exchange of best practices in the development and delivery of blended learning and full eLearning courses. As Dr. Lieberman stated, 'teachers learn most from other teachers as they are real and have practical experiences you trust and can relate to.' This is why it would be important to include +Rolland Chidiac as a co-instructor in these sessions as he would continue to share his day-to-day experiences with blended learning and his primary students. These types of initiatives also help to raise the profile of innovative teaching practices, and foster communication and collaboration between teachers and programs.

The second significant change to our project is that we will be employing Acer chromebooks instead of the tablets we had initially selected. After rigorous testing we chose this system because it will enable our teachers to view the Flash-based learning activities in the Ministry's Learning Management System without additional configuration. The simplified yet powerful interface of the Chrome operating system will enable us to fully leverage the tools of the Google Apps for Education suite to empower the professional and personal learning networks of our teachers and students. My recent experiences with these tools has clearly demonstrated to me how effective they can be at extending our learning to include educators and students from around the world. In order to adopt these innovative approaches our teachers need to be exposed to these tools and strategies. An excellent study by +Ryan Bretag and his team provides clear and compelling evidence that we are making the correct decision. '100% of the Pilot teachers preferred the Chromebooks over Nexus tablets or reviewing other devices' and '65% of the Pilot students preferred the Chromebooks over the Nexus tablets (24%) or Reviewing Other Devices (11%)'. Another excellent case study by +Terry Korte revealed that, 'since moving to Google Apps, collaboration has flourished across the district. According to Korte, Google Apps is improving the way students learn and teachers teach. Today, students and teachers are blogging about novels, working out math problems using Google spreadsheets, sharing documents such as lab reports, research projects and surveys using Google Docs, creating sites with Google Sites that include links, pictures, videos and more - all using Google's tools. One teacher says that Google Apps has significantly decreased workloads and planning, because staff no longer need to create several different versions of material for different access methods.' Google's recent announcement of the Google Play for Education initiative will also make these devices easier for teachers and IT departments to administer (send out applications updates to their entire fleet of devices with one click and app purchases can be charged against an account that a school has on file).

My future posts will focus on the explanation for measuring the SMART goals for our TLLP project. We will be adapting the rating instruments and research methodology from a previous study I conducted on the A Study of the Design and Evaluation of a Learning Object and Implications for Content Development.

Using Social Media to Empower PLN

Using social media to empower #PLN and #GAFE.

In my last post I described what I experienced at the recent GAFE summit I attended and how the application of the concepts and tools I was exposed to has clearly demonstrated to me how social media can empower PLN (personal or professional learning networks). When +Molly Schroeder posed her 'design challenge' and asked us why we were at the summit giving up 16 hours of our personal time on the weekend, my response was because, 'I am in beta'. I continue to look for innovative ways to engage my students by sharing strategies and resources with other educators. During his session +Mark Wagner discussed how one's PLN can expand exponentially from colleagues in your local staff room or department to educators from around the world who have a variety of insights and experiences and resources to share. Sometimes it can be a challenge to participate in these networks to the degree I would like given all of the extra-curricular activities at school and at home, but I find that what ever time I have been able to invest has easily generated an incredible rate of return.

At the summit I finally met +Sylvia Duckworth in person. She is someone I have admired and been following and exchanging ideas with on Twitter as we both use the AIM methodology and resources to teach our students French as a Second Language. At the time, I never realized that a tweet requesting to make a personal introduction at the conference would have turned into such a powerful and enlightening collaboration. Throughout the day we had been attending sessions by +Wendy Gorton, +Marc Dubeau, +Mark Wagner on using Google + Hangouts to facilitate dynamic and enriching collaboration between educators and students. While I enjoy using Twitter to connect and exchange ideas with my colleagues I think that Google + Hangouts really has the ability to take PLN to the next level as you will see below.

Unbeknownst to me +Sylvia Duckworth began formulating some very clear ideas about how our two classes could collaborate using the tools we had a chance to experiment with during our sessions. When you look at the plan she put together you will see an aspect of every session we attended that weekend; +Jim Sill YouTube in the classroom, +Joseph Romano Google Docs and PBL, +Pierre Sarazin, +Lise Galuga, +Tanya Avrith Google Drive and innovative pedagogical strategies for Google Docs and Forms, +Joe Sisco Google Apps, just to mention a few.

The same evening the summit ended Sylvia and I had a Google + Hangout to start experimenting with the tools (real-time Google doc collaboration, desktop sharing, video and text chat, Google effects, YouTube streaming) so we could get a clearer idea of how we could use these tools with our students. There was also the very practical element of being able to effectively plan the implementation of this project using the very same tools. Our students had a great time using the Google forms to provide input to the character development and interaction for the story re-tell activity. We were also able to look at the results in graphic form and discuss some numeracy objectives by examining how we would use the information to make specific decisions. The students were very engaged when we had a Google + Hangout to do a shared reading of the story and then to co-construct a new ending for the play in real-time based on their responses to the survey. We did not encounter any significant technical issues during our session, but that was probably due to the amount of testing we did prior to our Hangout.

Currently, we are at the stage where the students are creating their own version of the play using Google presentation and using Chrome Extension Twisted Wave, to record their voices reading the sentences they have constructed. This activity is a critical part of extending second language development as the students use the words they have learned to express their own ideas in a creative fashion. I have learned so much from my collaboration on this project with Sylvia and we are only at the midway point. It has not been without its challenges - trying to schedule real-time collaboration and planning for 2 busy professionals with different teaching schedules gave us a very narrow time frame to work with. Previous restrictions on my school network did not permit Google + Hangouts to take place due to blocked communication ports - thankfully this issue has been resolved. My board has not yet implemented GAFE so my students do not have Google accounts and access to their personal Google drives and documents. For the time being they will need to download the documents as MS Office files in order to create their presentations. I consider it all as part of being in 'beta' - the insights and experiences I have gained will inform my future practice and help me to support educators that have similar goals and ideas for enhancing teaching and learning.

Thanks again to +Mark Carbone, +Harry Niezen, +Bill MacKenzie, and +Google in Education Summits by EdTechTeam for all of their hard work in organizing such an inspirational and transformative conference.

My next great PLN adventure starts today as +Rolland Chidiac and I begin our planning sessions as part of the Ministry of Education's Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (TLLP) which is an annual project-based professional learning opportunity for experienced classroom teachers. The TLLP "...funds proposals from classroom teachers who seek a peer leadership role in curriculum, instructional practice or supporting other teachers. The three goals of the program are to create and support opportunities for teacher professional learning, foster teacher leadership and facilitate the sharing of exemplary practices with others for the broader benefit of Ontario's students". Our project which will be funded for 2013-2014 is Success for all Students: 21st Century Teaching/Learning using Tablets & A Blended Learning Model. We are planning on using Google + Hangouts and the methodologies and tools I mentioned above to facilitate this project. Once again I am looking forward to all of the insights I will gain from my collaboration from Rolland and others like +Michelle Cordy, who have so much valuable experience using these tools with their students.

I would be interested to hear from other people and how they use social media to facilitate PLNs.

What are some of the tools that you like to use?

 In what ways do you use them and what is the frequency and depth of your collaborations?

How would you adapt the model I illustrated above for your own PLN or classroom implementation?

What are some of the challenges and affordances of using social media to empower PLN? Please provide some specific examples.

Looking forward to hearing your responses.

Google Apps for Education Summit

The Google Apps for Education Summit #gafesummit was one of the most transformative Professional Development experiences I have ever had in my 17 years as an educator.

source: Google

To start off day 2 +Mark Wagner asked us to consider a message that we would send from the future  to today's teachers.  My response is to continue to invest in Professional Development, continue to be in 'beta' with your adoption of educational technology and use these experiences to inform and evolve your practice.

Keynote speaker +Molly Schroeder talked about Google's philosophy to launch early and iterate.  They are always in the 'beta' phase developing new products and new ways for people to use technology. Molly cited examples of newly released products like Google Glass and some they have decided to drop like Google Reader (no longer available after July 1st). This is inevitable and just means that they are moving on to something more innovative. All the steps are integral because they have led to the current stage of development. Google loves being in beta because this is the place where learning and growth happens.

I think that as educators we need to allow ourselves more time to be in 'beta' with respect to our instruction. The number and scope of Ministry and school board policies and initiatives sometimes makes it difficult. However, by investing this time in trying new approaches we will continue to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our students.

While I am learning a lot about technical tools and tips, the part that amazes me the most is the change in the approach to teaching that is required in order to leverage these tools to the maximum. Admittedly, this is a difficult shift for most educators to make. Trying new things means operating out of one's comfort zone and possibly making mistakes due to our lack of understanding or experience. I think Tim Lee's greenfield approach (a project which lacks any constraints imposed by prior work, source: wikipedia) to 'Re-designing your School technology around the Cloud' is the same approach we need to take towards our instruction. Innovative teaching lacks constraints imposed by prior instructional approaches.

We need to have the courage to try new things, new instructional practices, new technologies and to model this for our students. Below is the video on Moonshot thinking. The basic message is that 'we choose to do things because they are hard. We need to find what you are passionate about and not be afraid to take risks because that is what is required to solve the really big challenges.'

(source: solveforx.com)

In his keynote presentation +Jim Sill showed us quotes demonizing everyday technologies we now take for granted (like the bicycle) when they were first released. He suggested that we need to change our thinking about technology by changing our perspective (zoom in thinking routine). We need to adopt a more holistic view of the role that technology plays in the lives of our students. As educators we can no longer ignore the fact that '72 hours of video content is being uploaded to YouTube every minute'!! We can't let our fear of technology prevent us from embracing it and all of the forms of expression that it affords.

Molly said that we need to think about our students as being in beta. There is tremendous potential for them to learn and grow and that the focus should be on what they are going to do to find answers to questions and how they will represent the knowledge and skills they have acquired. We need to empower them to become active creators of knowledge by providing them with 'design challenges' that will allow them to flourish in beta.

They need to be involved in the process of understanding, building, designing and testing their ideas and to know why they are learning, much like the technology skills competition our students engage in every year. What if we allowed all of our students to participate in these kinds of projects on a regular basis throughout the school year. An excellent example of this is the 20% project. Make sure you watch the student testimonials about their final presentations on this project and why it is so important to them.

My subsequent blogposts will illustrate how I have begun to apply what I learned and experienced at this summit to my own professional practice. Specifically, I will demonstrate how I am using Google + Hangout to facilitate a #PLN around the planning and implementation of projects using Google docs to collaborate with my colleagues +Sylvia Duckworth and +Rolland Chidiac.

On The Rise K-12, eLearning Conference Part 2

How to encourage teachers to adopt #blendedlearning or #elearning to enhance their instruction? I continued to reflect on this question as the second day of the conference began and I was inspired by a number of examples of forward-thinking school boards.

In his keynote presentation, John Malloy, Director for the Hamilton Wentworth DSB made a point of saying that digital does not necessarily mean differentiated instruction or innovative teaching. I have always been a firm believer that pedagogy should drive the adoption of educational technology and that it is a tool not a strategy. I was not surprised to hear John Malloy mention that his board has a 21st century learning team with a variety of stakeholders to help define the vision and implementation for innovative teaching and learning. The Hamilton Wentworth DSB was one of our original partners in the EDEN project (Electronic Distributive Education Network) established in the mid 1990's to deliver elearning and blended learning courses to the member boards (Simcoe County DSB, York Region DSB, Upper Canada DSB, Toronto DSB and Dufferin-Peel CDSB). It is also no suprise that the Hamilton Wentworth DSB recently won the Ken Spencer Award a national prize for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. “Students develop personal blogs as online learning portfolios, and manage their digital footprint in a safe space while learning what it means to be a responsible digital citizen.”

How many other school boards have a 21st century learning team in place to make sure that teachers have the training and infrastructure to be truly innovative?

I attended another inspiring presentation by Joe Sisco, WECDSB who talked about how his board integrates Google Apps for Education with the Desire2Learn platform. Joe showed examples of how students in his board help to peer-edit each other's work, collaborate on presentation and group projects and how teachers provide descriptive feedback to students in a seamless and intuitive manner. It was another example of a school board that has the vision and understands what needs to be in place in order to promote innovative teaching and learning.

Bill MacKenzie, President, ECOO also informed us about the upcoming Google in Education summit taking place at Eastwood Collegiate in Kitchener, April 20 & 21, 2013. I do not think that it is a coincidence that the summit is taking place at a school in the Waterloo Region DSB. Mark Carbone and his team have been working with local business leaders in Communitech to create a vision and plan for the future of teaching and learning. Not only are they participating in professional development designed to change teaching practice, but they are also working on the Future Forum Project which recognizes the need to engage learners in a variety of approaches and activities to better prepare them for tomorrow. 'The project strives to integrate promising practices and learning across schools to meet the needs of all students in a more effective, sustainable and progressive manner.'

While the above examples are truly inspirational and operate at a very high-level, my own focus is to target a more grass-roots transformation of teaching in the mainstream classroom. Now to return to my initial question about how to encourage teachers to consider changing their instructional practices and to use educational technology to achieve different learning outcomes. My colleague at Elearning Ontario, Dan Bodkin sent me a link to a great article on How to Get Hesitant Teachers to Use Technology. It contains many great suggestions especially about 'giving them time to play' and experiment with the new tools. Early in the consultation process I provide teachers with a number of different models and examples based on the learning outcomes they have selected. However, I think that their own experiences using the technology is what will transform their practice. The number one complaint I hear from teachers is that they do not have the time to reflect on how these new tools can impact the way they teach. They are often over-whelmed by the options and features available.

It occurs to me that the initial conversation with mainstream teachers should not begin by introducing web 2.0 tools, new features to the LMS or terms like blended learning. Without the experience of using these tools and approaches it is difficult for them to determine their value or how it can transform their practice because they have no frame of reference. It may be more productive to use the upcoming sessions for school and board effectiveness planning as the means by which they could receive a gentle introduction to blended learning. Shortly, educators will be deciding on specific literacy and numeracy goals and interventions based on previous evaluation data (i.e. EQAO, CAAT, etc..) for the upcoming school year.

Teachers that have defined specific literacy goals related to reading comprehension, writing or oral communication can be given access to the elementary elearning carousel where they can select relevant activities according to subject, strand and expectations. Teachers will appreciate the simplified interface and will come to realize the potential for differentiating instruction by providing enrichment or remediation as a result of the comprehension checks they perform while students work on the activities at their own pace. Teachers that express an interest in using tools to complement these activities can be given an introduction to areas like the discussion board so they can gain first-hand experience in helping students to apply creative thinking and writing skills to their online posts in order to promote higher level cognition.

At last year's Digital Learning Forum a group from the Near North DSB presented a pilot project where they created a number of online evaluations in D2L to prepare students in grades 3, 6, & 9 for the upcoming EQAO tests. Students used tablets to access a variety of questions they could expect to see on the tests and were provided with feedback based on the answers they submitted. They could also complete the evaluations multiple times. This kind of a project would work well for helping teachers to achieve the specific numeracy goals they have identified in their school improvement plan. I think they would quickly come to realize the benefits of students being able to work on relevant activities at different times of the day from multiple locations and devices.

I believe that mainstream teachers will be more willing to embrace digital tools that can transform their teaching if they are presented as a natural and complementary way to achieve learning outcomes. They can use their initial experiences in the online environment (both positive & negative) to inform their practice so they can decide what tools and approaches they will incorporate in the next iteration of their course.

On The Rise K-12, eLearning Conference Part 1

Insights and reflections on the recent e-learning conference I attended. This past week I joined educators from across Ontario to share best practices and experiences with e-learning and blended learning implementations. There was tremendous energy and many great examples of innovative teaching and learning.

John Baker CEO of Desire2Learn began the conference by providing updates on a number of different areas in which the LMS is continuing to evolve. You can hear the passion and conviction in John's voice when he explains how the new tools are going to help teachers and students become more successful. He talked about flipping the learning paradigm by letting students find the problem they want to solve in order to increase their motivation, level of engagement and empower them to find solutions. He said that it was this kind of approach that helped him to develop the skills and knowledge to build his own company. Below are some of the product announcements that I found interesting;

The new elementary elearning carousel is to be released shortly. This simplified interface will make it much easier for younger students to access the activities in the Ontario Education Resource Bank according to the subject and strand they are studying. I wonder what is going to happen to all of the Flash-based resources in the OERB as HTML5 emerges as the web standard? The predictive analytics tool that runs in the background will help teachers to identify students that are struggling in their course so that they can plan early interventions to help them to become more successful. I was very happy to see that D2L seems receptive to my idea of including a draft post button for students working in the discussion board. This occurred to me during a recent class when my students were posting their online reflections in the digital stewardship unit and it came to the end of the period. The students that were not done had two options; post incomplete work (which can't be revised later or copy and paste to another application). This just did not make sense to me. I think having D2L staff at the conference and willing to sit down and talk with educators about their experiences in the LMS is key to their ability to improve their product and the way it functions. We will see if my suggestion makes it into the new release due of the discussion board out in about a month. The D2L binder is new a mobile app that will make it possible for students to interact with and annotate course documents and information on their tablets.

I attended some great sessions on how to engage students using web 2.0 tools such as glogster, voicethread and jing. I was very impressed by the quality of student work and the level of engagement and collaboration. As an 'early adopter' of instructional technology I can immediately see the value of these approaches and the tools that the teacher used to achieve the learning objectives. It's no surprise that the majority of people who attend the conference are keen on seeing new methods and tools that will help them to change the way they teach - that's why they attend. However, as the conference continued, I began to reflect on how to encourage the mainstream classroom teacher (not present at the conference, not currently using web 2.0 tools) to undertake the process of re-examining their teaching practice in order to discover new ways of improving student learning.