The first week of March was a blur. Middle School Battle of the Books on Monday,...and these guys took home the top prize - and are headed to the regional competition in April!
Then it was off to NCTIES for the rest of the week. The board gathered Tuesday to get things ready before over 5,000 educators from around the state descended upon the Raleigh Convention center for the annual technology in education conference on Thursday - the pre-conference sessions and leadership summit were on Wednesday. My committee on the board makes the Student Showcase happen! For months leading up to the event, we communicated with the teachers who had submitted proposals to bring students and share class projects and sometimes multi-school collaborative ones! This year, our event was moved to a MUCH larger space - a full exhibit hall equal in size to the one the vendors are always in. It was HUGE and we knew we could fill it, but we had no idea what the end result would look like. We had a plan, then modified it at least five times....but it turned out like this:
We are looking forward to the feedback from this year's presenters on how we can make it even better next year! But the BEST part was learning from the students! This group that gathered came from all across the state. Some walked from a few blocks over, others spent hours on a bus to be a part of this.
The end result was nothing short of amazing! Just look at those students sharing their project with an audience of educators that were learning from THEM! Four of the fastest hours I have ever spent - then it was off to the next task: setting up for TIES Together. I hope to see you there next March!
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This last two months, it seemed like every seventh grade science class I entered was studying the circulatory system! Two schools - at opposite ends of the district - took top honors for the level of engagement I saw while there. Gone are the days of Slim Goodbody and the plastic anatomy model with removable parts that came standard in science classrooms of yesteryear. They've gone digital!
Both teachers I visited had created a series of stations for students to explore. Some of those stations involved technology, others involved pencils and paper, most were a perfect blending of both. At one school, students created a replica of the circulatory system and then used Ozocodes to program the Ozobots to "be the blood" - the colors, red and blue, indicated whether the blood was leaving the heart or entering the heart. The little robots simulated blood flow. More than one student was overheard saying it helped it all make sense.
At a station at the other school, students held a heart in the palm of their hands! Using Anatomy AR and Mr. Body, and some Merge cubes, students explored the circulatory system in an entirely different way. They were able to see layers and dig in a bit more. The teacher had them capture their responses to questions and reflections in their science notebooks. Additionally, teachers in our district are using the Virtuali-tee by Curioscope to help students understand body systems. They use the app to scan the tee shirt - which is essentially a giant QR code - that launches a virtual anatomy torso like I had in the science classrooms of my youth. It even comes with a tour guide, Dr, Glover, who narrates your journey if you select that feature. My FAVORITE feature is the heart rate tracker. Students can make the heart on the virtual model beat to their rhythm. Also, this app would be awesome for EL students or even foreign language learners. It can translate and even read aloud in several images. You even have the ability to show text in one language and read aloud in another! That's pretty amazing! HERE is a guide I made for teachers in our district about those features.
So as we think about today's learners, it's important to realize that the technology has the power to engage our students. It is within our power to make sure the lessons we are teaching stick with them long after that end of the year test.
I love a creativity challenge! I also love sketchnotes - I've written about that here before. So when I read about World Sketchnote Day and the Pass the Sketchnote challenge, I signed up! The day before the challenge, I received an email with my group - it spanned the globe! The first person up was in Turkey! I read the directions and watched the video on how they suggested we add to each note and I was ready to go....or at least I thought I was. Turns out, I had to improvise. I was person three. The initial sketchnote was intricate and a little intimidating - it was a beautiful beginning that set the bar high. Eek! When it made it to me, it was clear that the directive to print, add and then taking a picture in order to pass it along on Twitter was not the best. BY the time it got to me, it had a discolored patch at the bottom... Ack! I spent way more time than I should have to try and figure out how to add to this so mine looked like a natural part of the design. So, I pulled the image into Google Slides. I drew my addition on a plain piece of paper and took a picture of it. I then used one of my FAVORITE tools - Luna Pic - to remove the background and make the image transparent. Then I inserted the image into the slide and resized it and set it into its spot on the sketchnote. I saved the slide as an image file and uploaded it to Twitter, tagging the next person in our group and attaching the requisite hashtags. That's my fast artwork (long to process) right there in the middle... And then crickets....I was the third person in a five person group. Person number four left us hanging. Person number five added her artwork and then our first sketchnoter kept it going. I repeated by Google Slides handiwork and it started another round - we were having fun! That's my addition on the right. I also added a white box to camouflage that blue haze that was still at the bottom and sent it on its way. This was fun. I connected with other educators and sketchnoters around the world AND I had to navigate some technical troubles that could arise when working on collaborative, projects of any type. I look forward to more opportunities to connect and share sketchnotes as a means of communication and collaboration.
Giving directions. It's not as simple as it sounds. Well, it usually is to the one giving the directions because they are already there - or have been there. But what about the one on the journey? Any journey - how to get to a particular destination be it a place or the completion of a task...giving directions should be an easy step by step process, right?
Maybe...but first things first: That person you are guiding - where are they now? Where are they coming from? What tools do they have available to help them navigate? How will they know they are successful in their journey along the way - not just at the end? Recently, I traveled some curvy mountain roads to get to an AirBnB. I tried using the GPS on my phone. When I put in the address it said, "address not found." I called our host and he was able to guide me (disclaimer: I was a passenger - not the driver) and with his knowledge of the landmarks I would encounter on my journey, he was able to give me feedback and help my family know we were on the right path and successfully navigate the country roads to our destination. His directions were clear and detailed. That type of scenario has likely faced by many of us. In public education, we also face similar struggles in our journeys. As teachers, we look to principals and other district leaders to help us navigate. Clearly communicating the steps and processes and guiding with transparency. Hopefully our guides know where we are and the terrain we are likely to encounter, but sometimes that is not the case and there is struggle. What happens when our students struggle on their journey? Are we able to anticipate the curvy roads and obstacles that they might face? Are we able to teach our students how to navigate through the obstacles they face in their learning journey - not remove them, but guide them to remove the obstacles themselves? Are we bringing them into the journey or expecting they go on it because everyone else is... As I enter the new year and my DTL journey continues, I remain steadfast in my belief that to guide others in their journeys, I must be knowledgeable enough to help them anticipate the frequent changes. I must also never lose sight of the very real situations they have in their classrooms. Therefore, when I create directions or plan professional development, I will always do my best to take into account where my audience is, where they need to go, and how to zig and zag around the obstacles they may encounter. I've been reflecting quite a bit lately about these two words. Specifically, how do these two concepts factor into the education we provide our students. Without question, both have a place in education. But as I read posts on social media and hear conversations among colleagues - and parent my own children - I often wonder how much compliance drives a student's grade! Are the grades, the end results parents see on report cards and colleges see on transcripts, truly reflective of the knowledge of our students? Are we allowing students do demonstrate their learning in meaningful ways or are we giving them recipes so they can all make the same product? More importantly, which of those skills will benefit them the most after they leave school - being compliant or being creative?
And school resumed. We began the process of regaining a sense of normalcy. Back to reality means back to our regularly scheduled meetings. I surveyed the group - they unanimously voted to keep it as scheduled.
The group: our Secondary Collaborative. This group consists of Middle and High School Instructional Technology Facilitators (ITF) and School Library Media Coordinators (SLMC), and while we meet informally throughout the year individually and in small groups, we get the whole gang together four times a year. Each meeting consists of sharing our own professional learning, discussing relevant topics in small groups, and - my favorite - PLEARNING! Our realities at the moment are rough as we adapt our professional and personal lives to clean up after Hurricane Florence, we needed this meeting to help us escape a bit. With recent updates to Google Expeditions, we dove back into reality by breaking out the virtual reality sets our district loans to teachers and checked out the new Augmented Reality addition to Google Expeditions. Then, we dove into green screen technology and tried out the features of Do Ink. The week before, two of them had reached out to me for guidance with a project a teacher wanted to try back at the school they support. What perfect timing! It's often hard to get folks together for formal professional development AND I was quite certain that the entire group would be able to use this back at their schools. Given a table of props to help them think creatively, a few features to test out, and two ways to share their creations the groups tackled their mission. The groups had two ways to share their creations: the Padlet (embedded above) and a Google Form. Each of these provided a different way to access the videos. I often share Padlet as a super easy way to get creations - videos and photos especially - off of student devices. As the majority of students in our schools have access to shared devices, finding easy and quick ways to get the content off of a device is paramount. Padlet is THE easiest. No log in is required, but the videos posted are visible by anyone with access to the Padlet. This can be a great addition to a teacher's website if they have made sure that permission has been given by the parents to share a student's image and work. Google Forms has the option to allow for file uploads. This method of sharing is more secure as the files submitted are held in Google Drive. Adding this question option creates a folder in the drive of the creator of the form. It also requires students to log in to Google to complete the form. (Not hard for many students...the trick is remembering to log out!) When the file is uploaded, it is named based on the email address. The end result is a folder with each student's work, named, in a folder the teacher can access. These educators had a great time plearning. I know of two schools that have taken this task and plan to run with it. When teachers are excited about a task, their students know it. Enthusiasm is contagious - I can't wait to see what our students create! "Every problem has an opportunity for something good. You just have to look for it." Recently, our district experienced a weather event. You may have heard of it - Hurricane Florence. It has taught our community many things about preparedness - and compassion.
Our last day of school was September 10, 2018. At this time, the majority of schools should be resuming classes on October 4. Until two days ago, they were heading back this week. So there are still many factors that could shift that target. We actually still have one school that is open as an emergency shelter for those still in significant need. Record setting rainfall meant many roads were flooded or even washed away during the storm. Many homes were consumed by flood waters to their ceilings - and they were not in flood zones. As local waterways crested and high tides came, roads and homes continued to flood days after this weather event. "Catastrophic flooding" the news called it - and catastrophic it was. It was days before we were able to truly see the extent of the damage Florence left behind - many are still sorting through belongings and debris. Twenty-seven people died during this storm. The first casualties were a mother and her infant that perished when a tree fell on their house in our town. The child's father narrowly survived. Among the other causalities during the storm was a beloved high school teacher in our district, who had recently retired, as he suffered a heart attack while being evacuated from his home. Over a week after the storm, people have received eviction notices and terminated leases with immediate deadlines to remove property or lose it. Many still have not returned to their homes and some no longer have a home to return to. Life will never be the same for our town, and that is ok - we will emerge stronger. We have teachers that have had to leave everything behind in their classroom due to the damage to their schools. We have teachers that have classrooms that were untouched offering help and support. We have schools opening their doors for students and teachers that can't safely return to their own. We have families that have grown in size as families welcome the displaced. Our community is coming together in unprecedented ways. As we prepare to get back into the business of teaching and learning, the directive has been clear - help our students heal. Maslow's hierarchy of needs lets us know that our students have to have basic needs met and feel safe before we can even think about teaching them. Our district is making sure that we do just that. All students will have free breakfast and lunch thanks to the USDA's national school lunch program in the month of October. Schools have organized food and clothing deliveries for their students. Each day, I'm humbled by the outpouring of grace and servitude demonstrated by our district. Check out #NHCSchat on Twitter and you'll see what I'm talking about. Almost every child enrolled in our schools, has been impacted by this storm - even those that evacuated. As school resumes, my middle child will be sleeping on a mattress in the living room as his room in inhabitable at the moment. But he has a bed and roof over his head. Many do not. He and his sister, who is sharing a room with her grandmother who was left homeless by the flooding, are thankful and have been helping others in our community by volunteering their time to prepare and serve food and cut trees. We are all looking forward to things slowly getting back to normal. No, not normal - better than before! I recently picked up John Hattie's 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning. It is the book chosen for two book studies I will be participating in this fall, so I dove right in. As I began, I reflected on my impact. As the primary groups I support are school media coordinators and instructional technology facilitators, I thought of them as my students. In reality, these are my co-creators of content, my collaborators - our relationship is symbiotic. Chapter 1 of this book came along at just the right time! Beware of educators with solutions - if these solutions do not remediate the needs of the students. One of the topics we routinely discuss is advocacy. The groups that I serve do not have dedicated budgets. In some schools, they are evaluated as classroom teachers - their evaluation instrument is detailed and the items often can't be measured through watching them teach a class. We spent a good part of last school year sharing ways to make what they do, visible...especially how what they do impacts student learning. We kicked off the year with a reminder of that. It becomes easy to get caught up in the "woe, is me" mindset, but that is not advocacy - that is complaining AND it shows that your focus is you and not the students. As we get started in a new school year, our goal is to make sure that our focus is on student learning.
One more question - how will we know? How will this impact be visible? What data, it may not be a test score, will show the impact? Our learners are more than test scores. We need to remember that when we evaluate our impact on learning.
I feel like this month far too many emails people received from me started this way. I actually took a vacation! I will add here that I did take my laptop with me, but made the conscious decision to put it away on day 2...once I felt sufficiently "caught up" enough to do that. At that moment, I fully dedicated myself to being more dog for the rest of my vacation.
In June, most people simply hear, "School's Out!" and think lazy days abound. Not so much for most educators I know! Don't get me wrong - we can be lazy, but most of us don't "lazy" for long....it just isn't in us!
This month, school ended and a group of us from the district were headed to Raleigh for our final NCDLCN session of the school year. I've written about this amazing professional development before, the North Carolina Digital Leaders Coaching Network - it is powerful! The past two years I have participated as a mentor and had the privilege to work with educators from across the state striving to be better edu-leaders in their schools and districts. This work, sponsored by NCDPI's Digital Learning team and the Professional Leading and Learning Collaborative at the Friday Institute has been a game changer for me and for those in my district that have attended since its inception. This last meeting of the school year did not disappoint! We even went on a field trip - teachers LOVE field trips...especially when THEY get to be the learners! We gathered inspiration for our own learning spaces by exploring the Hunt Library on the campus of NC State University. Immediately following that adventure, over 200 teachers and principals from New Hanover County came together for our annual Summer Institute for Instructional Innovation. Two days filled with presentation by (and for) our rock star teachers and principals. I was part of two presentations with one of our principals on the second day - our room was overflowing each time! We shared strategies for shaking up traditional meetings in one session and using digital tools with students in stations in another. Participants in that latter session had the chance to become Bongo, a character from the book Wishtree, as he carried out a plan to bring two young people together. The added challenge here was that Bongo was a drone in this station and they had to write to code to complete his task using Tynker. After Summer Institute, I was off to Portland, Oregon for the Leading Schools Summit as a mentor. Having attended the previous summits and always leaving feeling renewed, I can attest that this one was no different. While there, I was able to dig a little deeper into a challenge I was facing and get feedback and suggestions from another school/district leader. There is power in an objective third party offering insight into a troublesome task. The advice he gave has already been put into action - I am looking forward to how this year unfolds as I work on that challenge. I also made great connections with others on the west coast that are in roles similar to mine. Oh, and Kevin Carroll stopped by and talked to the group - he is an amazing speaker on the power of play. As I write this on the plane home, I can honestly say that I have learned so much this month alone. Next month, I'll try that lazy thing...for a few days...when I take a vacation. But I have some more learning to do first. |
AuthorJeannie Timken Archives
March 2023
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