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?

Taking Risks Without Hesitation!

This post is a combination of unpublished posts regarding teacher and student relationship of unplanned learning. This post combines a learning journey for me as a teacher and as a learner with my students discovering so much more than just learning skills, it is building real life skills experiences for us together as creators and learners.

The first reflection is about the social entrepreneurship that we embarked on this year with the Grade 5 and 6 students.  This entrepreneurship program through The Learning Partnership Adventure has  been and still is a learning journey for me and my teaching partner Carolyn Brambles and our business  BMO partner Gordon Mills.

Since the last post Student Lead Innovations  students' experiences persevere from failing to moving forward, from  progressing to regressing with acceptance and pride. The engagement among teams goes beyond tears, laughter, disappointments, reorganisation, commitments, readjustments, ideas, creativity, making, recruitments, marketing and accounting experiences.

Once a week the Grade 5 and Grade 5/6 students gather as a large group to reflect on the progression of the enterprise and determining next steps. Sometimes students choose  to meet at recess to work on their products. The students' experiences have been very rewarding  in discovering unplanned rich experiences bubbling with problem solving, conversations, thinking, decision making, reflections and planning next steps. What an experience! It lead students to bond their creative ideas and to come up with innovations from the designing to the production, ordering, purchasing, the marketing and best of all the fundraising. This real entrepreneur experience embarked the students with the best lifetime learning that could never be taught if planned.

The final teams are: Lip balm Golden Glow makers from natural products,  Activities Book designers and publishers, Cards designers and makers, Paper Makers created from natural products, the tea makers, researchers and producers of dry herbs for Cups of Hope and the Pencil Case Devil designers. These experiences lead students to sewing, designing, creating, making products through a rich process. The students took full ownership of persevering and continuing to prove by reflecting and learning new steps to apply and build on experiences. The hands on experiences are definitely learning skills from imagining, designing, exploring, creating, trying, analyzing reexamining, reflecting to sharing with the community for fundraising.

As an educator this journey confirms that learning is chaos with rich experiences that embeds more than just concepts. Learning is an eruption of skills that builds new experiences in an environment of perseverance, communication, questioning, listening, conversations of  re-examining the how and the possibilities of reaching for success with a purpose.  It is an experience so realistically rich in effective partnership of a learning enterprise with a passion. of an engaging community. The students have developed characteristics that enhance the ability to analyze based on team based implementations with character developments of ownership and visioning. It continues to be a true adventure!




The students have reached more than curriculum concepts, real skills that they learn to nurture and gain for life. As a teacher it is very important to provide students with skills by having them experience,  reflect in order for them to become aware of these fundamental skills.

I am sharing some students' reflections,  if you take the time to read them you will hear students voices!




The students enjoy programming and coding. The school day is too short, we decided on an after school club for innovations to give opportunities for further experiences and implementations with coding. In January we decided to explore together this venture, by building robots using Makey Makey with Scratch. Our school Improvement Plan focuses on mental health, therefore the robots were to interact with the students and gain feedback about their emotions.  Alison Evans Adnani from http://makerjunior.com/  and her sons were able to join us few times for this expereince.

These unplanned experiences of self-building skills and self directedness of motivation and innovation has also flourished in a life long learning experience for the students. This platform of innovation started from building up conductive materials with the Makey Makey to robots that interact when buttons are pressed by the students for checking about their feelings.

The students for the first time presented the robots publicly at the Director Forum on Tuesday April 7th. They will be presenting to the school as well and they will be getting feedback from the students.

The following videos explain the process of building the robots and I the video of the robots at the Director Forum.

The students are always inspired with opportunities to learn. The Entrepreneurship and the robotic experiences have given students opportunities to be more than just creative, an opportunity for life beyond the classroom. We value creativity on a daily basis, this opportunity has been full of unexpected creative challenges for all by building on our ideas. It is a creativity on the teacher part as well as the student and the ability for us to communicate respectfully and grow. It is the ability of learning how to learn with a growth mind set to continue learning together,

Are Students Communicating?

There is always a great value of strong practices with the students by always unpacking the skills. The students have co-constructed criteria of many skills from collaboration, self-regulation, responsibility, organization, initiative to independent work.  The achievement chart from the Growing Success Document  is to be used by all Ontario teachers as a framework within which to assess and evaluate student achievement of the expectations in the particular subject or discipline.

The Grade 5 and 6 students have been unpacking skills The 6 C's of NPDL by Micheal Fullan. Thanks to Karen McEvoy who is the consultant leading New Pedagogies For Deep Learning and  many school teams have been introduced to the process.

I have recently built and continue to build with my students the awareness of , what is communication? How can a students communicate effectively in a variety of styles, modes and tools could be outlined for different audiences and purposes?

 Through many opportunities students explored, recognized  and reflected about the dimensions of learning progressions on Communication skills from New Pedagogies for Deep Learning. During learning tasks, as a facilitator I have to be careful not to over scaffold the thinking.  I have to give students room for ownership for processing and responding. The communication skills are in real time through co-constructive ideas in which students continually in a conversation are: examining, inferring, predicting, analyzing patterns and relationships, solving problems, allowing students to own their ideas. The partnership in conversations become interesting and valuing each others ideas. The key is to reflect on the progressions throughout the learning tasks and giving students a chance to value their learning through the skills. Below are some examples of learning tasks that guided their progressions. 

The studentsè began with  powerful conversations by unpacking the science concepts of Grades 5 and 6 curriculum on electricity and matter by using MindMup Google App.

The Grade 5 and 6 students consolidated about the team conversations. The students identified that during their conversations they were analyzing the information by using mind mapping as the tool and producing communication of connected ideas from the team members. They also identified that communication is a design of many modes from oral, visual to written.  The majority of the self reflections were at emerging as students were starting to establish and follow communication protocols of working together. As students progressed through reflections on communication the following designs were identified: 

• Making sense of the communication, elaborating, clarifying, questioning, building on, challenging aprtnerès ideas, roles for groups member for an effective communication 
• Producing many modes through many tools of communicating,
• Communicating to evidence that connects to audiences and concepts (Multidisciplinary), staying relevant
• Monitoring, managing reflecting by improving the challenges (behaviors, attitudes)

The students began reflecting by using Google forms. They were given time in class to reflect on the communication skills and continue reviewing the developments of the progression to learn the process and to improve communication. I tried to videotape students during the process and reflect on how to improve. I have combined several videos below of the process through many learning activities from exploring the Arctic Giant map in relation to Science and Social Studies and everyday learning experiences and opportunities at school. 

The following videos describe the tasks:

Looking at students self -reflections summaries off the forms this is what students said:

• Listening more and asking more questions
• Communication better with my peers and sharing more in class
• listening and giving chance for others to speak. 
• By sharing more of my evidence 
• Making connections when communicating for understanding.
• Express my learning in many choices
• To always think about the audience
• Respect the others by having roles, note taking, questioning, valuing each others' thinking, interpreting 
• Building vocabulary 
• Improving my French
• I changed to improve by speaking more during class and getting included/participating with activities
• They've made an impact on my learning in french,because I have gotten better at my Grammar
• I have improved on listening more and asking questions that I need to. It has helped me share ideas or questions.
• 
  

  I improved my oral french by focusing on the dimensions of communication, I engaged in conversations and practiced it. I also improved my writing by focusing on the dimensions of communication, by writing on task of the subject and by listening and learning to improve. And finally, I improved my listening by focusing on the dimensions of communication, by looking at the person who is talking and asking questions to clarify the question.

  The communication competencies have made an impact on my learning. For example, it has improved my oral french. Secondly, it has improved my writing. And lastly, it has improved my listening.
• I have changed by being more interactive with my group members while discussions and by talking and putting my ideas out there. I am comfortable because my group members agree with my ideas and because  I am usually familiar with the topic.
  
• The communication competencies have made an impact on my learning because, I will have background knowledge before conquering a individual/independent project. It also made me understand more french in a way, and it gives me the initiative to do something by myself.
  
• 
  

  It has helped me realize what I do in class and why I do well in school, and continue to do well. It is because I have been being more respectful, and helping. You have been guiding most of this way. You have showed my many cool things that I probably would not have known about without you. 
• I have reflected on what in my group works and what does not,to improve my communication with my team, audience and more.For example with my group we all,including me choose the roles which would match each of our particular communication skills we are good at.If at the start we just choose random roles we liked,but as we got to know each other we changed the roles accordingly to improve.
• It has helped me improve my communication as a team player,explain or give a message and more.They have helped the receiver of my message to understand and have connection with the message I have gave to "stick" in there mind.

The students will continue reflecting and building on communication progressions. I will continue to reflect on How am I engaging and motivating students to foster communication skills?

Experiences of Significant Ideas

Engaging students with significant experiences during their learning requires that teachers direct students into real problem solving reasoning.  Students should be given the time to experience their curriculum and promote curiosity  into their daily local and global environment. The students need to be presented with opportunities to question and create curriculum real world extensions and fuel their passion to learning. The students become experts at orienting learning and begin extending the curriculum to everyday experiences.

 Grade 5 and Grade 6 students have inquired based on the science curriculum expectations about the human body and biodiversity. Both grades have integrated the arts with the science by explaining their learning through the arts. The students acted and drew about biodiversity and the human body. The post of Collage Of Learning refers to the integration of the arts with science and YouTube for visible Thinking  post,explains how students shared the facts about the science concepts and how they reflected on the drama by using video notes.

Pictures from an eportfolio about the visual art and the drama.

 Prior to unpacking the science expectations, students' thinking is provoked, as it is described at an older post, ,Propelling Curiosity. The Grade 6's were provoked through this video about bear siting in cities  and this biodiversity video.  The Grade 5 students had a chance to observe animal organs from the butcher shop and have discussions about the purpose and functions. A folder of some images of the organs 

During the inquiry process, I need to encourage more problem solving for the students by connecting real life and real experiences in relation to their environment.. Sure students discover for themselves what they don't know, I still think we need to push further on how and why they are learning and encourage further discussions about their surroundings.  The focus of this post is to provide further options for students to discover real issues on why these issues  matter in everyday life. 

The Grade 5 students applied their learning by listening to local events about the flu, vaccination and Ebola. The students also had discussions about healthy eating and how commercials lure us into the industrial food choices, by viewing commercials and reading articles. These images on the Padlets include videos, news broadcasts, and articles that mattered beyond facts. 

 The reason I am not embedding the Padlets is due to privacy of links from students' responses. 

Recently we heard the news about the Medi Robot comforting sick kids, CBC News Calgary, below is the French article that I shared with the students.

Gr 5 Ss relating to article about Robot & comforting Patients http://t.co/gfX87FZo3Y #ocsb pic.twitter.com/s0oGLl1uzQ

— Rola Tibshirani (@rolat) February 20, 2015

Grade 6 students have applied their learning on biodiversity by reaching into local issues that mattered like the effect of the daily applications of salt on the roads and solutions, the Ash Borer Tree  and how trees were cut in Ottawa and will not be replaced until 2017,  the siting of the Coyote in Ottawa and the effect of pesticides on gardening.  The students were able to connect to these issues that they have unpacked in relation to  the curriculum.

An audio example about the siting of the coyote

Video about the effect of salt.

As I am checking the next science curriculum and reflecting on how the new concept should matter in students' everyday life.and reach beyond facts, it is important to give students the chance to be critical at reasoning about their learning. 

Learning is beyond knowledge of facts, it is extending these facts to everyday life experiences. Effective critical thinking skills and collaborative skills need to be implemented through critical reasoning tasks for authentic ownership of learning. The students become  critical, creative, and reflective problem solvers . When promoting local and global issues critical thinking reasoning solidifies the foundation of raw materials that matter within everyday life and future learning.  As I am thinking ahead with the new concepts, how will I extend and bring passionate curiosities for what matters?

Couldn't agree more with this tweet from tonight!

Could not agree more with this statement RT @edlearner5: @gcouros TRUTH. Students don't want to do work that they feel holds no purpose.

— George Couros (@gcouros) February 23, 2015

Youtube For Visible Thinking

The Ottawa Catholic School Board provides all students with Google accounts. Grade 5 and Grade 6 students have amplified their learning by using YouTube for explaining science inquiries.In a previous post A Collage Of Learning students integrated the arts as well to explain their learning.

The focus of this blog post is to share the process of using YouTube for visible learning and thinking.
After researching, reading, analyzing the text and determining important facts in relation to their inquiry of  the science expectations, the students organized their information in a graphic organizer focusing on synthesizing the information.

1. Uploading images on Google Photo Slides.

2. Students could choose slide duration, slide effect, and transition.

3.  Video is uploaded to Youtube to add annotation from the reading organizer.

4. Enhancing video for slow motion for reading annotations.

5. The students also added a video from Youtube for further discussions by using Spotlight. More  focusing is needed  to make sure the spotlight is visible and to add a comment where to click and when to start the video link as well  opening  in a new window.

6. A screencastify of a student's collection of evidence on the eportfolio.

7. The students also used video notes to reflect on their drama video  presentations while focusing on the criteria. I was able to add comments as notes as well.

Grade 6 students used YouTube video slides and annotation to explain the biodiversity of Canadian animals and to analyse the positive and negative human impacts.  The extra step that the Grade 6 students added was using the Snagit images about the classification of the animal in their photo slides.

 

Technology has amplified students' voices by emphasizing on the evidence of their learning in line with the co-constructed criteria, curriculum expectations through video slides and annotations on YouTube. The students' voice was also evident by reflecting through video notes about their drama presentations. We will be posting all of the cross-curricular evidence on a Thinglink for access to all about the visual art, drama and explaining human systems for Grade 5 and biodiversity for Grade 6. Technology is important for students' voice to strengthen their learning experiences and their importance of being at the centre of learning. Through technology the process of learning becomes visible to capture students' experiences. I continue to reflect: how can students' voices and thinking be evident for all?

Double Dates- #7 & #8 My Learning Partners.

I am enjoying the #28daysofwriting blog posts , it has enhanced my focus on learning. I started  reflecting yesterday and as the day went on I had difficulty focusing with family activities. This is a double weekend blog dedicated to my students who always motivate me and guide my thinking. My daily voyage with my students inspires me to continue persevering and learn with and from them, students matter!

 What I have learned  from this partnership with the the students, is to always create conditions to ensure they are learning through:

•  Risk taking 
• Allowing many chances at learning 
• Unpacking the curriculum and co-creating criteria
• Providing time to reflect 
• Opportunities to collaborate 
• Students voices and choices
• Questioning and inquiring,
• There is no one way of learning
• Changes are the process of learning
• Provoking thinking
• Students are initiators
• Moving during learning 
• Relevance of learning 
• Real life changing experiences
• Reaching out to them for changes in my learning
• Assessment is learning
• Empathy to issues locally and globally
• Creating is learning experiences
• Joy and laughter 
• Respect and dignity 
• Partnership at evaluation
• Acknowledging how they matter 
• Reasoning and problem solving
• Innovations by connecting experiences and reaching to new ideas
• Trust and collaboration

I always look forward to my partners in learning. This partnership matters as they make a difference in my learning growth. This teamwork allows collaboration for embracing new possibilities. What unexpected learning will I be reflected upon this week? 

I guess the next posts will continue to be on the empowerment of this learning partnership.

Global Collaboration

Grade 5/6 students have participated this year in a cultural exchange with Lyon France, thanks to the French department at Ottawa Catholic School Board for arranging this cultural exchange. The students have learned about geography, history, food and holidays.

On our last Skype session the French students inquired about the Canadian Geography and the pronunciation of the Provinces and Territories in English. At the end of the last session my students sang for them the Canadian National Anthem and shared with them the concept of distances from across Canada.

Our Skype session this Friday started by having the French students sing their national anthem. Today the students compared winter activities between the two countries. Students from France were so surprised at the way we live in these cold conditions. How do students commute to and from school? How do we manage to survive in this cold?

Since September the students have had this opportunity to connect and learn with another culture and become more of global citizens. The students have the opportunity to grow in cultural perspectives, geography knowledge, language competencies by speaking both languages and interpreting the spoken English from the French students. Communication skills were enhanced by listening carefully for understanding the language and the accent and be able to respond by explaining and clarifying their intentions. 

These experiences have encouraged the students to understand that Global Citizenship is global collaboration of learning that fosters global competency for many years.

 How do we continue fostering these global collaboration and give our students the chance to become Global citizens?