Owning And Acting On Learning

Connecting to previous posts, Shifts in Learning and Honoring Within Learning of students' thinking journeys about global citizenship, a long overdue blog post reflecting on students values of exploring the Sustainable Development Global Goals. The focus of the blog will be on ownership of  acting on learning  while exploring the causes and factors of developing events affecting local, national and international communities

Giving the students the values of connecting creativity and pedagogical thinking while exploring and learning about the Sustainable Development Global Goals (#teachSDGs). The Grade 6 students focused on designing conceptions representing SDGs and bringing awareness, impacting the Grade 5 students daily actions.

As mentioned in the 10 reasons to pursue Sustainable Development Goals as educators it is our mission to have students take a lead. This year's Grade 6 students developed conceptions applying sensors (Hummingbird) and coding (ScratchX) to share their learning of SDGs with the grade 5 students.  This year's focus of taking national action by building water filters for the Frist Nation communities with mercury-polluted water.  

This blog post will focus on having students to advocate their own learning by deciding how best to reach their audience, to observe audiences' reactions during the presentation and to get feedback if the Grade 5 students were impacted.

Students' samples of the planned audio that were recorded for preparing the coding of the sensors. The planning was prepared to be presented bilingually.

Link to the description in English

A sample of a conception

There are many ideas to bring the Sustainable Development Goals to the classroom.

Dear supporters: RT this & the movement grows. Dear #globalgoals enthusiasts: Use #TeachSDGs verb & help us showcase great tweets4teachers. pic.twitter.com/rx29R5uNPo

— #TeachSDGs (@TeachSDGs) May 27, 2017

https://twitter.com/TeachSDGs/status/868275752558632963/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fteachsdgs%2Fstatus%2F868275752558632963

From visualizing the ideas of the conceptions to the actual design. The students reflected on the process by using Life of a Project. Many students persevered with the programming of the sensors and became experts in guiding others as a learning communities. A reflection sample of the design process.

 The links of students' Blog posts explaining the process of the Sustainable Development of Global Goals.

Chelsea

James

Isabella

Sydney

The students always reflect on the competencies throughout the process. I am sharing 2 samples of  students' reflections on the 6C's http://npdl.global/  Their reflections are written at students' French level of expressing their lesrning.

When we focus on a process of learning owned by the students, they make a difference in their own learning and among their community of learners too. When sharing the Grade 6 students also collected data if they have impacted the Grade 5 students. It was very powerful for students to reflect on the collected data after presenting the causes, factors, and reasons of the Sustainable Goals. They interpreted the data by using the ladder of inference in order to analyze and  conclude if they have impacted and empowered the Grade 5 students.

Many schools from around the world have taken actions by connecting with others for problems solving and making a difference. By following #teachSDGs on Twitter you will discover many projects from around the world. This is an example by Sean Robinson High School Students.

Lasting change has never been achieved through legislation but by one courageous act after another.#lightpoverty #CanadaKenya #teachSDGs pic.twitter.com/pzMLOJWQrL

— Sean Robinson (@sr_tutor) June 2, 2017

As educators, we must continue to inspire students' creativity with lasting impacts from around the world by reflecting on how other nations endure many difficulties for survival. It is building compassion for taking actions by impacting their own lives and the life of others. Harnessing and encouraging Global perspectives for investigating, recognizing perspectives, communicating and taking actions in becoming global citizens.

What learning opportunities are we creating for students to take risks and take actions toward local and Global communities?

Every Day Is Unique

There are so many challenging approaches to consider when we are thinking about education. For student-centered learning approaches the needs to be innovative, creative, critical thinkers, designers, deep learners, reaching  personalized learning, empathy, and many important skills are required. There are many views and experiences that educators, parents, and administrators face reaching these approaches.

How do we facilitate these purposes? How do we get students to experience these purposes?

I am by all means not an expert and my learning continues to be enriched from my students, my colleagues at school at the board, from the community whom I learn with and of course online learning.  Every day is unique for me and my students as we reflect, refocus, rethink, retry and unlearn to relearn.

My years of teaching experiences locally, nationally and internationally have guided me in making connections about the process of risk taking and learning with the students.

Many unpublished posts since September and spending October learning with many educators from the Makers Faire, EdInnovation, Ontario Makers and Mentors Innovation, many questions from participants and daily experiences with my students have energized me to write this post.

Every day is filled with unique challenges and these challenges drive our learning and our students’ learning experiences.

This year is a different experience for me. In previous years I have taught students for two or three consecutive years. Meeting my new experts this year and working together to learn compassion empathy and valuing thinking have been unique daily experiences. Learning is a process and we all know that it is not linear and it loops with many challenges that make us reflective researchers and learners.

I am following an advice from a friend by keeping my posts brief.  I just captured few slides that highlight the beginning of the year from 3 different thinking processes that I shared during EdInnovation Oct 22nd and 23rd.

The year begins by building a culture of reflectors, collaborative communicators, critical thinkers, creative learners whom together identify their intrapersonal character to connect a community of respect for themselves and others through interpersonal values of ideas.

Through many learning experiences which I will share in details from students in later posts, we continue to explore the unlearning for relearning and valuing the how and why of skills . It could be from walking into the classroom to content, concepts of learning as well as critical and creative thinking skills throughout the day. I have learned when reflecting and consolidating with the students to highlight the needs of unlearning to determine what we need to relearn. This lead to focusing on the value and the purpose of the how and why. The Backward Brain Bicycle is the video that the students always refer to when we unpack the unlearning.

This is important because our brains are always set in making judgements based on assumptions and predictions than unpacking the purpose and retrying with the focus on the mindset.  This is the learning through habits by recognising the unlearning.  It is a shift of mindset that requires for students to build new skills, to value and understand the learning process based on their individual needs.

It is a process of ongoing long-term goals of discomfort for learning growth. The students to become more comfortable with risk taking and tensions during learning. Being aware that habits of an unlearning are very important to explore and reflect upon in order to pursue the innovator's growth mindset by celebrating successes from failures. Basically, it is to continuously take the time, to improve through risk taking, reflect and identify  the unlearning, recognise and determine the effort of the unlearning for a growth of learning.

This growth also affects the classroom community culture and opens up students' minds by refocusing, reflecting and identifying their individual growth.  The insecurities and the overwhelming become part of our classroom valuable culture of empathising with each other as we all recognise individual risks. It is a long process to allow this mindset!

A growth mindset is more than just positive conversations; it is identifying the habits and developing a critical mindset of skills to unlearn for deeper learning.  It is giving students the skills to develop their learning. Giving them a voice to unpack their learning and become confident reflectors.

These quotes are so true:

“Teach students how to solve any problem, a general problem-solving approach. And teach them to do it in a community.” "That’s what’s really going to serve them as they go through life." Alan November

All students are capable of thinking and learning. We need to encourage the students to achieve a culture that learning is thinking, valuing others ideas, recognising tensions, risk taking and pausing to reflect and make habits of recognising the unlearning for relearning or learning.  

Have you risked the unlearning with your students? What unlearning have you done as an educator to achieve learning with your students?  Every child is a learner, am I giving them the time to discover and reflect on their learning? Every day is unique, what matters is, how are we recognising the uniqueness of changing our thinking and mindset? How students are recognising their mindsets in learning situations?

Design Thinking A Storyboard Of Explorations!

The innovative process is a storyboard of risk taking through problem solving and collaborative creative tensions of students' thinking. Students explore learning by collaboratively problem solving learning to question, interact, consolidation and communicate leading to an exploration of valuing ideas from classmates. The process of innovation becomes a thinking skills process of wiring creativity and building on previous knowledge leading to create new knowledge of problem solving from technology, coding to rich conversations.  Throughout the year we need to equip students with thinking tools, confidence with risk taking when using programming and reflecting on learning as well as consolidating as a whole class on our learning journeys.

The United Nations Global Goals have been the focus throughout this year. Post on Global Goals The design thinking process is a long process for students based on ideations, iterations, self reflections on skills and consolidations for determining next step. For the Global Goals the students wanted to inform the community by taking their conceptions to business centres. Due to many school events sometimes the journey is held up. The students shared their journey with only the school community.

The slides below show the process from imagining, planning, refining and  reflecting about the thinking and the tools (Hummingbird, Lego Mindstorm, Makey Makey) of designs.

Design thinking is about the students' thinking process from goal settings and reflecting about every step of the process.  Having an audience for sharing is important especially to impact the audience by the design.

The following playlist demonstrates the process of sharing with the audience from the provoking steps to the reflections from the audience.

The full playlist will play through to view individuals; place the cursor on the left of the window for individual teams' videos.

This year has been a year of training and learning with the students. I will continue to embrace the creative, critical thinking and collaborative design process the following academic year. I will apply what I have learned and I look forward to new learning with the new group of students.

For educators it is important to embrace the learning with our students accepting successes, failures, uncertainties and the perseverance of the innovative learning process. The classroom community is our blueprint for our professional learning as we reflect from our students and our larger community from the school, the board  and of course the global online educators.

Designing With An Impact!

This blog focuses on promoting students voices and actions not only in the classroom as well as in their community.  Patricia Fiorino and I have a 3D printer through Teacher Learning and Leadership Program. The Grade 6 and the kindergarten students  have worked on projects together,  The 3D printing experience has been extended for Grade 6 students by applying their problem solving, collaboration  and creativity skills to passion projects.

To encourage the students' interactions through the school community, early in the year I approached our school resource teacher if the students could design and 3D print  objects that could be useful for the school's special needs students. The problems were presented to the Grade 6 students to design and use the 3D printer for passion projects not only for solving problems, also for serving the community.

The following videos represent the process from iteration of prototyping to the end users.

            The passion project for sequencing blocks.

The passion project for Math skills:

Video 1

Video 2

This link is A screencastify of Joshua explaining the changes on the numbers

Through this process of designing the students learned:

• To value each others ideas 
• To rely on each other to problem solve
• To initiate and take matter themselves by coaching each other
• To iterate many prototypes through feedback of end user
• To take control in their own hands
• To 3D design by monitoring area, ratio, volume, dimensions, coordinates on the plane and determining their next steps
• To find solutions for the school community (more projects still to be completed)
• To impact others in their community through a process of solving complex problems and that designing is full of iteration
• To impact others by their innovations
• To use the instruments of ideas and technology for a passion
• To commit to a process of creating and orchestrating solutions in a large group task
• To get feedback and insight from the users on next steps
• To initiate innovation of intimacy of consuming time with users and unpacking what works and doesn't work
• To engineer and think together as a process of research that is lead by them, a shift that is usually lead by adults
• To accept diversity of thinking and abilities for designing 
• To bring skills together from technology to multidisciplinary by building tensions of thinking 
• To experience a process with many intensities for sharing ideas and challenges by getting great insights and solutions in a controlled chaos!

The students always empower me with their creativity,  perseverance and their drive to innovation.  Their drive and diverse thinking brought skills together from collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication with energy and motivation to create. The main concept that the students acquired through this ownership of designing process, is that designing is the iteration from technology to multidisciplinary thinking tensions that creates great insights for creative solutions.

The students independently became equipped with a way of problem solving and continuous exploration with the passion of iteration for success. They mapped their own challenges!
.
As educators how are we giving students experiences to connect and understand how to use their talent in serving their community?

My students inspire me!

It has been a while since I have shared my learning experiences, The students inspire me and I owe them to share the process of  integrative thinking. I was just reading their reflections about the competencies which motivated me to pursue sharing our experiences.

As an educator the drive and the motivation for learning is developing on a daily basis through reflections and next steps. If the classroom learning is based on thinking and complex curiosities for creative purposes then I have to embrace the unexpected. It is not an organization of activities rather a transformation of values when learning through conversations, knowledge building, analyzing, reflecting and sharing. Reflection is the most important cause for the success, it is not an event! It takes place while observing students during the tasks, conversing with them and continuing to give students autonomy by questioning.

The  learning with me and the students unfolds together in an extraordinary situation through mistakes that are overcome by learning and growth. It is an experience of the unknown you just have to persist and follow through as it is student lead. Being wrong is a useful skill when trying, persisting than just failing. The learning for me is from the enthusiasm and engagement of the students. We travel together through the unexpected zones of the process. As educators  we should not be afraid of the unlearning, it is a trust of discoveries of  problem solving, valuing the learning through compassionate conversations that lead to more inquiries,

Thinking is not an organisation of activities. It is a process that is driven by the students' complex curiosities of problem solving. It is definitely messy and non linear learning.

Through Integrative thinking the competencies are unpacked and woven through, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, character and citizenship. As an educator I need to guide the students evidence of the 6 C's during the process by scaffolding reflections and bringing awareness of these competencies.

Here is an example of the 6c's from a team that collaborated, communicated and  focused on the critical thinking for knowledge building.

The student reflection focused on why they are accelerating in the progression of the dimension of Critical thinking and knowledge building. How during the Prop Pro model (Rotman I-Think) not only they were problem solving, analyzing and researching to confirm and learn new facts. They also pursued by adding a causal model to further the thinking of colonizing Venus and Mars.








A short video capturing the process

 A video of  conversations demonstrates the 6c's during team collaboration

Pictures about the integrative process and students' collaboration during team work after reflecting and persevering to develop their thinking.  the 1st picture indicates the initial research and the second picture further analysis. Pro Pro model (Rotman I-Think) of why colonize Venus and Mars or why not colonize Venus and Mars?

The initial integrative model followed by further analysis.

          
                














This reflection also refers by using the Pro Pro integrative thinking that the team collaborated with. The team was able to also analyze all facts, give examples and compare the reasons. This reflection shows how the team was leveraging technology through reliable sources.

The students deserve the right of growth. As educators we need to embrace learning as a life of a project.  There is no size in learning, there is lots of growth by enriching a process of competencies and thinking skills that is also self-directed learning.

Here are questions to make us think of learning and growing:

• What situations am I creating for students not to learn individually?
• How are students collaborating and orchestrating their learning?
• How are students valuing and trusting all ideas? 
• How am I integrating competencies during the learning process?

Making is a Thinking Process!

 I continue learning with my students by applying designing thinking strategies and the thinking process of the 6 Cs . We keep on evolving with the process where the students become the specialists as they apply and reflect on their thinking progressions. As we unfold the process through designing and making, the students embrace the development of skills and perseverance along their daily explorations.

Students are experiencing multiple steps during their learning from digital tools to collaboration with each other and the community while exploring design elements and habits of learning.

From a previous post  on integrative thinking using open ended conversations, integrative thinking models for valuing of ideas, combining designs and interpersonal skills for knowledge building on the concepts of electricity.

Following up on the process of thinking skills from the last blog post; the students were able to use technology to capture the thinking process of iterating from visualizing their combined ideas to the prototypes of the cardboard games.  

This video represents the revision history of the students' design and iteration of ideas while producing the prototype. The students used google drawing to update the drawing while constructing the cardboard game. I asked a couple of students to produce an English version of their process since all of their learning is in French. 

Students also explained the materials used during the process.

From the Kevin Brookhouser presentation at Ottawa GAFEsummit we applied the life of a project into our version and students reflected on the life of their project that required iteration and problem solving skills along the way.

This is the bilingual students language version of a life of a project. 

The evidence of a life of a project when designing and reflecting on the prototype.

Throughout the process students also reflected on their progressions of collaborative, character and  creative thinking skills. 

Making is so much more than the space it is:

• About the engagement phases and capturing the learning journey. 
• Building students' skills on collaboration, Character, Communication and Creativity. 
• A journey focusing on problem solving, metacognition by reflecting throughout the process on  skill building.  
• It is knowledge building of new concepts that are valued among the classroom and school community. 
• Generating ideas about the experiences, sharing them and synthesizing.
• It is about the thinking and rethinking during the process at every step. 
• It is student centered focusing on questioning, iterating when inventing and making. 
• When students are immersed in risk taking with perseverance and problem solving at every step by improving and changing ideas along the journey. 
• It is about building a community of seeking feedback and giving feedback.
• It is a journey of problem solving and creating with a collaborative mindset for innovation.

Making  is about embracing the process where students love their learning and discover the relationship of the thinking concepts of science, technology, engineering, math and the arts. It also is more than STEAM, it is about building partnership of collaborative thinking skills and motivation for learning.

I continue to reflect on:
What skills and concepts are the students acquiring, experiencing and reflecting on during their learning journey?
Are the students leading their learning through problem solving, reflecting on the process and sharing collectively their learning?
Are the students focusing beyond the content on citizenship, creativity and interdependence?
Are students aware of their own criteria through thinking habits?

So What Is Creativity?

I am still pushing my thinking forward when students are in the role of designers. As educators we read a lot, we connect online and face to face. I need to learn and move forward with my students' thinking and their ability to decipher the process through them than just through what I know. I needed to question more and listen more as well as reflect with them. My students are my partners in moving my learning forward!

As we continue to unpack the process of the skills through daily applications of learning tasks, We consolidate and reflect for determining next steps about what is making through: coding, 3D printing, robotics, designing, of course including concepts from science, the arts and math when designing. This blog will reflect on our present learning process.

As I embark on this journey with my former students.  This is important, when we are unpacking strategies we are not only referring to the present, we are also reflecting on last year's experiences. We are connecting what we are already know and unpacking the thinking.

The students already highlighted that creativity:

• Is designing with tools like craft materials and tech tools
• It takes perseverance and growth mindset (Grit)
• Imagination
• Suggestions
• Causes
• Brainstorming and using strategies with colleagues for unpacking ideas
• It is critical thinking as problem solving
• Ideas
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Repeat, improve and retry

The students are excited about printing objects with the 3D printer this year. We are beginning to reflect on the causes and passion projects for the use of the printer and how can we be empathetic with the tools and make a change to someone else not just for ourselves?

All Grade 6 students will participate with the cardboard challenge and will apply the concept of circuits to their games and coding, also fundraising for Play For Change for Free The children.

I have shared with the students the following image to reflect about the process and the journey of the process. 

We reviewed some examples from last year about empathy and creativity as well as some new ones:

11 Year old makes an unbreakable spill proof cup for her ailing grandfather

A makerspace in a hospital

Ipad Keyguard shared by Nancy Khalil

Wheelchair Stroller

This is our second week at unpacking the process of creativity with empathy. We are starting our passion project with our school community. From our resource teachers for our special needs students, one class is designing sequenced puzzle pieces that could be reused and the other class is designing sequenced numbers grooved puzzles. Of course the students began with their own visual and continue to apply communication skills, solving problem strategies including mathematics with the prototype and designing on Tinkercad for 3D printing. 

The key to guiding our learning is our daily consolidations of unpacking the thinking process, reflecting on misconceptions, new learning and determining our next steps. 

New learning guiding questions: : 

• Am I capable of finding or suggesting a solution? This was a huge learning with opposing ideas and finding a solution
• How am I building on to existing solution?
• How am I  applying creative thinking strategies?
• How am I taking the responsibility or my part of the project?
• How am I dealing with opposing views?
• How might I ...?
• Am I applying open ended conversation in order to  understand my colleague's suggestion? 
• How are we gathering our ideas?

These are the reflective questions that we are presently focusing on to be explicit with our thinking towards our creative thinking process and building experiences for our learning.  

As we continue to explore and reflect many circumstances are occurring throughout our process. This is a critical shift in educators' learning in combining projects with skills, concrete procedural knowledge and having students to think for themselves. 

This is not a tidy process or a lesson plan, it is a transformation of learning and understanding. How are we giving the opportunity for our students to be creative problem solvers? How are we encouraging students to think critically about ideas and situations?

The following example of designing with a purpose for Kindergarten students to record themselves without having to touch the laptop. 

Why A Relationship?

I have few unpublished posts from the summer regarding how the classroom might be changed for this academic year. I have decided to wait for the students to be part of this process that I was designing and imagining. Yes, it was just a visualization of many changes that I wanted to pursue and apply this year. I have always focused on ownership and visible thinking with the students.

This summer I was lucky to take part in many community events of learning. From the University of Ottawa art engineering with Little Bit to the makerspace and connecting with the makermobile engineering and designing staff. With professor Hanan Anis whom I have connected with by deciding to learn together in combining university students to work with the Grade 6 students on designing thinking prototyping learning. Also attending ISTE this past July has confirmed many learning opportunities with makerspace. Reading "Invent To Learn" By Sylvia Libow Martinez and Dr. Gary Stager has also confirmed students' ownership through making.

This blog focuses on my new learning journey of makerspace in the classroom. My colleague Patricia Fiorino and I are working on TLLP (Teacher Learning and Leadership Program)of a Makerspace in the classroom.  My new learning focuses more on students' decision making with strategic thinking of designing and integrative thinking.I enrolled this last spring with I-think Rotman school Educators Institute on Integrative Thinking in the Classroom. I also embraced the process of sketchnoting that helped me reflect on the process of learning and thinking through visualizing.

My blogging journey for this year begins with this post.

As always at the beginning of the new academic year, building the classroom relationship is and has been the focus. We have in the past applied the cups and the elastic team building task by towering the cups when collaboratively only using the elastics. Another activity is the tower of marshmallow with spaghetti as well as building a structure with few tools and leaving step by step instructions for other groups. Last year's highlight was the scribble bots for team relationship activities. The focus has always been the collaboration with conversations among team members. We co-constructed the criteria of conversation and collaboration.

I am so lucky this year that I have my previous students form last year and only ten new students of two Grade 6 French Immersion. I am working this year with my partners Carolyn Bramble and Jennifer king whom we connect our learning and students' learning. The students are so eager and we are all excited to embrace this year and continue with past year experiences of Free The Children and entrepreneurial projects and new ventures. Since we have unpacked many skills( 6C's)last year my purpose this year is how can we take our thinking further and apply more thinking skills and strategies or routines.

New learning:  Through the activity of making a clay sculpture or symbol representing each student We added the six word story describing the choice of the design. The purpose was to reconnect together while sharing the six word stories in teams. In turn each team member had to present their colleague. We aimed at authenticity and not perfections when presenting each other. Through the conversations students made connections and continued the conversation by asking Tell me more....

New learning more than just a conversation, non judgmental conversations by just listening and connecting.




Collaborative conversations were also unpacked through chak talk strategy of adding on to each other's ideas without judging. We started with the topic of why school? We provoked our thinking by looking at schools from around the world. First students presented their own ideas of what they know. Each member writes his or her own idea on a sticky, then students within the team read and add on to other team members' ideas. The process is written conversations of analyzing and adding on. All voices are presented and the team would come up with a conclusion or a summary. Video 2 has the sample of Chalk Talk.

New learning of written conversations, all voices are included without judging and building knowledge with evidence of all voices.

New learning of open ended conversations  students sharing their favourite objects based on Tell me more... letting their thinking or story be shared without judging and only adding the five w's about the object and how it made them feel.

The students also unpacked more collaborative skills by figuring out how to make stick bombs and catapults. The students revisited the collaborative skills by focusing on the interpersonal and interdependent skills, on perseverance, tenacity and resilience as well as learning partnership and the learning environment.

This video highlights the six word stories and sharing for building relationships, chalk talk and collaborative tasks of stick bombs and catapults.



This video highlights the process of chalk talk and reflecting about the process.



This video covers the open ended conversations and how we are applying the thinking strategies to unpack electricity.

Reflecting on learning is the key to the success of our learning process. The students have always practiced reflections on a daily basis. The students need to be given the chance to take ownership and a purpose of the application of their learning process. These are some students' reflections about the chalk talk and open ended conversations.

New Learning The Visual Alphabet application for visualizing our ideas. We began unpacking the the process by having every student draw a visual of a house using the alphabet. After representing their ideas visually every student was to reflect on their drawing before sharing with their team, what would they like to keep of the drawing and what will they change.

While sharing the students applied open ended conversation by listening first to the self reflections of the visual before adding on tell me more..., asking further questions without judging and offering suggestions on the visual 

The visual alphabet is already being applied for the designing prototype project for 3D printing. I will be blogging about this process soon by also exploring designing with a passion and empathy for 3D printing.  

Through visual thinking each class decided on a class team name.

New learning the "ladder of inference" for uncovering explicit thinking. My colleague Jennifer King who also attended the I-Think Rotman school with me began applying it to Terry Fox. We did the same in our class. It was interesting to listen to students' conversations of identifying the difference between author's opinion and the actual data.





Our new learning journey is just beginning and I need to discipline myself to blog weekly for my reflections.

As educators, we are bound in the relation and the trust we have with our students. We need to build this trust not only with the students but with us as well. Not only saying we believe in them and having the trust and the faith in them but actually building this relationship of the community.  This community should always start with the co-construction of criteria on collaboration conversation and feedback based on criteria without the feeling about being judged. It is so important to give students time to have room to prototype and unpack what is a collaboration and positive relationship. Also giving students time to have room to apply their thinking and be motivated to learn to take actions, and risks without being judged. This is the beginning of our learning journey as we take risks in new learning of deeper thinking of skills and tools for the makespace and our thinking routines that support our prototype of empathy and passion for learning.

Questions to reflect on for this year:

1. How intentional will my teaching be to design learning that engages students intellectually and academically?
2. Will the learning tasks be worthy of students' time and will they be personally relevant to the world they live in? 
3. Will the interdependent relationships in the classroom promote learning and a culture of learning? 

We are all educators!

On a Saturday morning with many events in Ottawa from the Race weekend to the arts and family events, our IT department gathered with many colleagues for an edcamp. The day was rich with many questions, applications, the how to, the why's and problem solving with differentiated application to all levels.

With a set up from an amazing team by our department and differentiating the needs for the participants. It was a landscape of exploration focusing on the process and how tools enhance students' thinking.

#ocsb #plocsb #edcampocsn lots of sessions across #GAPPS #documenting #learning #coding @BrendaWocsb pic.twitter.com/USau9VfpDQ

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) May 23, 2015

Learning along #ocsbedcamp #ocsb #plocsb @OCSBelementary @BrendaWocsb leveraging technology on Saturday morning pic.twitter.com/hjpXKc0OzU

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) May 23, 2015

 The inspiration started from the opening of the edcamp, that learning does not stop in June!  June is an opportunity for teachers to continue exploring and try tools to enhance students' thinking. Give students and teachers a chance to continue learning alongside each other, try new explorations with a purpose to be comfortable and set new learning to further apply in September.  It is also a time to continue taking risks alongside our students who are our coaches for feedback of evidence of learning.

The first session was on coding. An eager group who not only wanted to learn coding, also to be able to apply to students thinking supporting curriculum expectations. I was so excited to be among this group of teachers from middle school and high school who wanted to roll these ideas today with the students. We finished our discussion about the importance of tapping into the students and take their expertise with the coding process. To reach thinking and learning, teachers need to scaffold the reflections throughout the designing of coding and to have students share, reflect and build on each others learning.  A document was created and shared with links from online sources and connecting to communities in Ottawa. http://code.org/learn  http://code.org/learn
 http://www.smokelabs.net/  https://www.raspberrypi.org/

The second session so motivating with a large number of educators who had an interest in the Makerspace from a classroom to school wide. It is exciting to connect and share a vision of ideas and innovations. Many communities in Ottawa could be reached for support as well online from around the world. Thanks to Lisa Brennen for taking notes.

#ocsb #ocsbedcamp Rick Alexanderson #makered make sure to learn with ur Ss tools have reasons free 2 @BrendaWocsb pic.twitter.com/Q60z29fnvb

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) May 23, 2015

#ocsb #ocsbedcamp making with the Ss @BrendaWocsb #makered #onted pic.twitter.com/q9WB3lfTuV

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) May 23, 2015

At the last session a full room of educators interested in exploring documentation for learning. The group was separated in order to differentiate the exploration. The room was buzzing with so many questions, so much sharing and so many happy celebrations at solving ideas from all levels.

I shared an example on how I observe and document in Junior by using a Google form while students are at task and how I use the add on Save as a Doc to view responses from Google spreadsheet to a Google document. https://goo.gl/FrDcuu

Bill shared Hapara and accessibility for assessment, sharing GAPPS, viewing students' learning tasks and organizing folders.

Primary teachers explored how to upload videos and photos onto drive from the iPad. During the session with a small group  of primary teachers we explored using blogger for documentation.

All teachers had many ideas to share and reflect on with others. Even when the session was over teachers continued sharing in groups. With a team of teachers, I shared  Kaizena for feedback and documentation of learning https://kaizena.com/  for students' accountability.  Snagit from TechSmith https://goo.gl/RkWR40  and Screencastify https://goo.gl/su66JK for students' ownership of learning documenting and explaining their thinking.

A great learning opportunity took place yesterday with conversations of learning and for learning. It was hands on for learning and sharing. As educators for us to continue exploring and learning, it  will take a team of collaboration from colleagues and from our students.

 What will be your next learning adventure?

Why are we doing this?

Today I was inspired by this tweet and had me reflect about students interactions from the classroom to real life connections andexperiences.

Why are we doing this? @DanielPink #TLDSBleads #edchat pic.twitter.com/3ihIPc4vFb
— David Sornberger (@davidsornberger) January 30, 2015

Gr 6 students are applying their learning from the Science curriculum about the human impact on biodiversity.

On Friday, after analyzing a French text about pesticides and its impact on plants, animals and humans, students were  able to apply the French and science context to a relevant experience about the use of salt in the winter. The students thinking was provoked by watching  Road Salt and its impact on the environment.  Today we also looked at the news on how the National Capital Commission report will not be replacing the diseased ash trees until 2018 .

The students also analyzed this video in French and made connections to the parks in their neighbourhoods and the Beaver Pond near the school.

Students curiosity lead them to the City of Ottawa bilingual site to further learn about the disease and its treatment. 

The tweet had me reflect on the importance of making learning relevant and how learning is important to the students. How can learning become relevant enabling students to think differently?

Why collaboration matters!

As I embark to be part of the  #28daysofwriting with Tom Barrett who has always been an inspiration for learning in my online learning Twitter community, my focus will be reflecting on pedagogical and daily inspirations from my students.

In class we always develop a positive approach for learning from each other. We reflect on our learning skills and determine our next steps. Last week I recorded short vines about students analyzing their science reading about "Les éléments nutritifs". The students, together analyzed a text for understanding in order to learn the importance of nutrients on the function of the human body (Gr 5 Science Curriculum) on healthy eating habits. Students shared their background knowledge on daily nutritions and referred to the Canada's Food Guide for further inquiry.

For reading students are provided with opportunities to analyze and think together rather than relying on the teacher or Google translate. It is a collaborative thinking  community, building on each others' knowledge, understanding, and strategies developed by the students . The students annotate the text while reading, highlighting Mots amis, inferencing unfamiliar words and connecting to their background knowledge.

The purpose of our collaborative community is to overcome challenges, learn together by giving everyone a voice and building on each others' learning. Students question, connect, share and build their confidence in learning a second language. Students persevere, take risks by caring and persist on finding meaning together.

With positive engagements of building confidence, students' accomplishments become team based, and collaborative skills become comfortable leading to conditions for thriving together. Students learn interdependence of decisions by ensuring each others strength and building new learning to the benefit of all.

This week students will follow up by reflecting on their skills when watching the video and sharing their point of view on healthy eating habits. We need to keep in mind by asking, what opportunities are we allowing for learners to learn form each other? How students can become their own self-directed learners?