From Thinking to Doing

Earlier this school year, I shared the Drone history and future Drone taxis with our school division’s Technology Focus Group. We live in a world where innovation, change, design thinking are enabling staff and students to problem solve and create possible solutions. I just viewed the following video while seeing it pop up on my G+ National Geo feed. The perseverance and ingenuity that this group had makes me realize that we all have the ability to make a change.

Life Takes Flight

I dedicate this video clip to the Tech Focus Group who are always looking for ways of #ChasingGenius!

 

Let’s Be Flexible!

When we think of FLEXIBLE or being flexible we may focus ourselves on:

• our health – can our bodies be more flexible or do we need to work on different athletic moves or…
• our food – allergens exist and how can we eat well and stay healthy
• our work – balance between projects and ideas

AND really, this post is about:

• our schools – what kind of learning environments are we providing in order for students to be engaged critical thinkers, problem solvers and curious learners who are seeing the connections between education and the world around them?

My notes below are the experiences over the three day period where I attended a Canadian Academic Leadership Summit hosted by Surrey Schools and Discovery Education. 

PLEASE click on the Flexible Learning Environments photo to be taken to the Spark Page that I created.

https://spark.adobe.com/page-embed.js

 

Got Me a Blog, Now What?

 

Hey Let’s Innovate!

#psd70 Middle years students using devices to create academic vocabulary on their class site.

Their images, video clips, text, audio, and research are all being crowdsourced.

 

OK, now I dun it! I’ve used the INNOVATE word and if you know me or follow my blog, you can associate this buzz word with the educational technology focus that I share so much about. Well, yeah, this time the headline is to catch your eye. To get you hooked into read further. Not that I don’t have something important to say when the headline isn’t using overused words/ideas, but I wanted subscribers or anyone who is reading this to think about INNOVATION (in education).

To innovate or not to innovate!

Really, that is not a question or a statement that teachers should be worrying about and education has been speaking about being innovative (with edtech) for the last decade. In an age where traditional educational systems value compliance, conformity and complacency, the idea of looking at innovative teaching and learning using technology has taken off because technology has found it’s way into everyday teaching and learning. It is now accessible in schools (some more than others), Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives have found their way to alleviate the stress on school divisions to keep up with access and vendors are coming up with classroom-specific tools.

Read what the Canadian Education Association was saying about Innovation in 2012 and some of the great questions they were asking.

So what about QUALITY LEARNING?

This year our school division Administrators and Teacher Leaders are working with the University of Calgary as we delve into Student-Centered Leadership. We are asking many questions, reading current educational research and looking at what we need to learn to promote the learning of our students. (Administrators are looking at what they need to learn to promote the learning of their staff.) So, can this work be innovative? Maybe some of the actions will be, maybe others will be remixes from previous work only better. We are continuing this learning by:

• modelling effective teaching practices
• engaging in professional conversations around student work
• designing learning with colleagues
• facilitating effective PLC, etc.

Here’s where I’m at with INNOVATION.

Although the definition of innovation is the action or process of innovating; a new method, idea, product, etc…. For me, edtech can be innovative in that it is either a support or service that creates value for our teachers and students. Nowadays tech tools are less expensive (who can remember a classroom projector that cost $10,000? Now they are much, much less and found in many classrooms today). Edtech satisfies a need and it benefits many. It allows for engagement, creation, discovery using different tools, mediums and avenues for learners. Edtech also has destabilized education where the teacher no longer is the “IT” person; the one with all the knowledge or access to it through print materials. Learning has become more open with Social Media, online communities, open educational resources, and edtech tools/cloud-based systems. So, with all of this available to me, why would I also start on an “edventure” within the Innovative Teacher Academy with AJ Juliani? I enjoy learning, but it is also the idea that I have some ‘homework’ to do, I have some learning to take on, and I get to learn with others outside of my jurisdiction. Co-constructing our experiences makes this Academy a rich learning opportunity. I hope to live up to it!

If you want to check out what some of us are sharing publicly, follow and/or search #ITA17. As you can see below, my Tweetdeck has a new column.

 

 

 

Innovation in Tech with Student-centered Learning

Here’s a brief overview of a ‘spark/ignite’ session that I did this morning with all of our High School teachers at one of our sites.

• There are opportunities for staff to further explore creativity and the design process – read Innovator’s Mindset and Launch as they are two solid books with practical strategies that teachers can employ the very next day. (If you want to listen to George, Katie, John and AJ speak on this topic check out #IMMOOC Season 2 – Episode 1 video that was streamed just 5 days ago.) I had my ignite groups listen to 8:45 – 10:30 and then at the end of my session to 58:00+.

LTPF Policy Direction 1

Students use technology, online learning and digital learning media to access, share, and create knowledge.

• With so many websites, apps, extensions out there sometimes teachers can be overwhelmed, check out edtechteacher.org/tools for vetted resources.

Students use technology, online learning and digital learning media to demonstrate the competencies.

• Have you ever been to an Escape Room? What if you could bring that into your classroom and have students dig into the curriculum in a different way by problem solving, thinking critically, collaborating and communicating in authentic and engaging ways. Check out breakoutedu.com for basic information and games.breakoutedu.com/atoc to see an existing list of immersive games that you can play. (Password – showyourwork.)

Students use technology, online learning and digital learning media to demonstrate what they know and are able to do, through effectively using a range of resources and media.

• All of our students have access to Read&Write for Google Chrome – for use in GDocs, .pdfs and websites. Many ways they can provide teachers with information.
• GSuite of core services – GClassroom keeps getting better and better, students enjoy access to online materials whenever and wherever they are.

Students use technology, online learning and digital learning media to monitor their learning progress and inform decisions through the use of data and evidence-based reasoning.

• There are many formative assessment tools, check out some of them below:

 

 

 

Privacy, Digital Literacy & Networked Classrooms

In 2017, education, educators, students and parents are trying to keep up with the unstoppable pace of technological change in the classroom. It is no longer just about the devices nor the access but also looking at the profound impact on privacy protection for our students. We want them to have active and positive digital footprints while also protecting them from becoming soft targets for commercial data gathering and marketing practices by various companies.

I attended the full day in-depth workshop followed by the evening public lecture sponsored by the Educational Technology Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. The evening opened up a discussion on Canadian and American research on the privacy challenges posed by networked classroom technologies and educational software. It also shared new insights on education law and policy designed to protect students from cyberbullying.

The keynote and panelist speakers (biographies below) are renowned Canadian and American research scholars who shared new developments on the privacy challenges.  They also discussed new insights into education law and policy designed to protect Canadian students from cyberbullying.

 

Full Evening Public Lecture Video:

 

Speaker Biographies:
Dr. Valerie Steeves – Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa 

Professor Jane Bailey – Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

Dr. Leslie Shade – Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

Dr. Priscilla Regan – School of Policy and Government, George Mason University

Dr. Philip McRae – Alberta Teachers’ Association 

These researchers are also leading a national Canadian research study that is examining privacy, online behavioural targeting of children and youth, digital economy policies, and cyberbullying. Information is found at http://www.equalityproject.ca.

 

Moving from Artificial to Engaging

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning conjures both positive and negative opinions on these terms. For those into gaming, the many multi-player games on computers and gaming systems have incredible reaction times and awe-inspiring environments. For this into TV games, IBM’s Watson made quite a splash on the quiz show Jeopardy in 2011 against former winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. And for movie-goers, Terminator’s Skynet world domination over the course of five films.

In the world of education, opportunities for teachers and students to create and design reactionary systems have found a common place thanks to a renewal in coding and making. Now to take this learning to higher level, there are children’s toys on the market that learn from the children that own them, there are robot/webcam systems that learn facial expressions, software systems that recognize a human voice and there is a great game below designed by Google Developers that shows a method that programmers use to teach computers to recognize in this case, hand drawing. It is called Quick, Draw! and it is a game where a neural net tries to guess what you’re drawing.

Watch the video to get the gist of Quick, Draw!

 

Are you ready? Do you want to train a “computer”? Go to https://quickdraw.withgoogle.com/ and have fun.

Questions to ask students:

• why would training a computer/system be important?
• if you could create one yourself, what would you like the computer/system to be able to do?
• besides the examples share in the post above, are there other movies, TV shows, articles, songs depicting artificial intelligence and/or machine learning? Share them with each other and on this post.