inform | ScratchEdu Meetup

Please see the following announcement from two of the CBE's innovative educators:

We are very excited to announce Southern Alberta’s first Scratch Educator Meetup!  

A Meetup is an opportunity to:

• network with other educators and community members who use the Scratch programming language with students
• share project ideas and see projects that others have done
• brainstorm with colleagues to extend your project ideas to new heights
• learn about the  support and resources that are available to help you and your students - both in Calgary and in the Global ScratchEd Community

We are looking forward to creating a support and resource group in Calgary and area for those who are using Scratch (or are new to Scratch and want to learn!!) in their classrooms.  Our professional learning model is similar to how EdCamp works.  You ask for the sessions and discussions that you want to be a part of - and the group works to facilitate those activities and learning opportunities!

So please, join us join us on Wednesday, May 11^th, 2016 in the learning commons at Captain Nichola Goddard School from 4:30 to 6:30 for this professional learning opportunity and let's help students be inspired to create amazing programs! There is no cost for the event and afterwards, anyone who is interested can join us for supper to continue the conversation.

Please

 RSVP through Meet-ups at http://tinyurl.com/scratchedyyc and follow us on twitter @ScratchEdYYC.  You can also join up and we will keep you informed of upcoming ScratchEdYYC events.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.  We look forward to seeing you!

Loralee Martin (Div 1 and 2)                                  Steve Martin (Div 2 and 3)

                                              

Making Learning Go Viral!

By Steve Clark @stevewclark

This week I attended a workshop (Create, Innovate, Voice) run by the one and only George Couros this week. While what we learned, wasn't really all that new to me, I took away a tonne. It also got me thinking a lot about how we can, as a school district, celebrate the amazing things that happen in our classrooms.

Our school board, the Calgary Board of Education (hashtag #yycbe on Twitter) is the second biggest school district in Canada. It turns out we have one of the smallest presence on social media platforms out of many school boards in Alberta, let alone across Canada.

Our organization/school district hashtag is overrun and dominated by the media and the general public. It is predominantly associated with negative comments and news articles about things that are happening in our district. We, as a large group of passionate and caring educators, can change this negative view of  #yycbe. We have amazing things happening in the CBE and we also have a 10 000 strong staff that can help with spreading the word!

What I think we need to do is take away some of the fear away from sharing outside the walls of our own school, maybe even outside the four walls of our classrooms. If we embrace that change that is happening, instead of hiding from it, we can make a difference.

It is so easy to, and feels so much safer to isolate ourselves within our own context. If we really want to grow as educators, I believe we need to be reaching out and connecting with others more often. This reaching out helps us think outside the box. It gives us different views and other ways of doing things. It also can confirm the great things that we do in our own practices. We also need to remember that every one of us has something different to offer and can offer something to each other too.

In our workshop, it was awesome to see other people get excited about Twitter as a networking tool. There were not many people that had previously joined twitter but after the session, we had a whole lot more people willing to experiment and learn more about this amazing networking and PD tool.

It's exciting to thinking about the challenge of increasing our Social Media presence. We have a big job ahead of us but because our sheer size, we also have the possibility of going big, very fast. All we need to to start gaining some momentum.

Let's do this #yycbe!

Here is the story that was told through Twitter throughout the day with George Couros (@gcouros). It was fun seeing new people tweet and connect through this medium. Let's hope it continues!

 

Online Professional Learning Networking Blitz

Get ready to jump in virtually with both feet and build your Ed Tech connections. It's been a long, cold winter and Spring Break is on the horizon, so let's make this easy! You don't need to leave the comfort of your own digital space in order to share, connect, chat, and learn together. Over the next 2 weeks ILT is doing an online networking blitz to really take advantage of the online opportunities that are available.

Join us in an online journey together as we:

• share sources of inspiration and innovations in the world of edtech
• discuss the supports and professional learning offerings you need as you delve into your inquiries
• challenge ourselves to think deeply about how we interact and learn online
• ponder current challenges and topics in edtech that are relevant to you
• chat about the role of digital leadership in your schools
• reach out to others and broaden our networks

Where will the journey take place? Meet us online in our Google+ Community, Twitter and right here on this blog.

Looking forward to connecting with you online!

Posted by: Tannis Emann
on behalf of the ILT team

Calling All Explorers, Adventurers & Navigators of Our EdTech Ecosystem!

Sometimes it's overwhelming to consider all of the different pieces of educational technology that are available to educators and students. On the Innovation & Learning Technology (ILT) team, we know what it's like to feel as though you are faced with never-ending ice-covered mountains, caves, valleys, and monster fortresses of technology that you must journey through. (Apologies, it's -35 degrees outside and I've was stuck indoors watching the LOTR trilogy all weekend). 

Let's continue with this analogy. Imagine that you are an explorer of new worlds. Your purpose is to help identify new species, and learn about how newly discovered organisms interact with one another other, as well as those that are already known. You wander along many pathways, intrigued by random sightings and interesting tidbits, which you note in your digital journal (or online PLN), and share with your fellow explorers.

In ILT, we consider educators and students to be explorers of educational technology. We consider edtech as an ecosystem with a diversity of organisms that serve different purposes. In our educational context, we want you and your students to place yourselves at the "top" of the food chain, not in a way that makes you superior to other beings, but in an approach that emphasizes that edtech serves the user, not the other way around. 

What are your thoughts on the ecosystem of educational technology? (Here's a link to a post that uses a a generic inquiry example to explore aspects of the digital learning ecosystem that includes D2L, CORE, Web 2.0 tools, Google Apps, Iris and more.) How do you navigate it? What analogy might you use to describe how students and educators interact with technology and each other? Post a comment. We want to hear from you!

Google Apps and Assessment

Task design and assessment is central to many educational conversations today, and it’s hard not to think about how the use of educational technology can really lend itself to this work.  As more and more students and teachers use online collaboration tools, it seems to me that assessment is an easy fit.  Let me give you an example.  I can pick any web 2.0 tool that’s on the CBE’s Accepted Tools list, like KidBlog and be able to see a child’s learning process.  Why? Well, blogging is a means for documenting thoughts and ideas that can be shared across a platform while receiving feedback.  The feedback is important in this process because it offers the writer an opportunity to reflect on new ideas and suggestions for future work.  The intent is that the writer continues to blog and reader’s can see how the writer develops as they share new ideas.  But blogging is only one way of formatively assessing student work.  I’d like to share another example.

With the release of Google Apps for Education in the CBE, a whole new world of opportunity to engage, connect, and assess has opened up.  Google offers a variety of apps including Drive, Sites, Groups, Gmail and Calendar, all with their own unique purpose.  The common feature between all of these apps is the ability to collaborate simultaneously with many users.  To fully understand the capacity of this environment, I will zero in on Google Drive.

Google Drive consists of Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Forms, Drawing and the ability to add even more.  With Documents, students can work together on a project where each individual student contributes their own work.  Through the revision history available to them and all those sharing the document, it’s easy to see who is writing which part of the project.  

The share feature allows users to invite others into the document, including outside CBE contacts, like parents.  Imagine that.  A place where parents can come in at any time, as long as they have Internet access, read their child’s work, and be able to comment (if the permission has been set).  The teacher can also comment and provide feedback along the way so the students know how to improve.  If that sounds too busy, permissions can be set to read only, and parents can have a discussion with their child or email personal comments directly.  The other neat feature about Google Drive is that users can upload all types of documents, images, and videos, and be able to share in the same way.  I believe this app supports the shift in education towards a more student-centered focus.

Before closing, I’d like to also mention that Google Forms is a great way for users to conduct summative assessments.  Teachers have been using Google Forms to create pre and post-assessments to gauge where a child is in their learning.  To know what a student knows, what they want to learn, and what they have learned at the end of a task (commonly known as K-W-L) is one such example.  The responses are easily submitted and the data is compiled for easy viewing.  The teacher can then print off graphs and charts to share, or can make visible the responses to each person submitting a form.

Assessment plays an integral role in education and we would be completely amiss if we did not incorporate educational technology into the conversations.  There's so much possibility.  We just have to enter.

Shafina Dharamsi

Specialist, Innovation and Learning Technology

Thanks for Joining Us! And Here's More...

We're sending a huge shoutout to the educators who just joined us for our professional learning kick-off webinar, Create Your EdTech Network! Here's what we did:

• Used Google Docs to facilitate a dynamic real-time brainstorm about how informal learning networks shape our professional learning networks (PLN).
• Brainstormed our wonderings, explorations, challenges, and ideas around leveraging educational technology in learning.
• Got our community excited about combining social media like Twitter, blogs, Google+ and more, with face to face sessions lead by community members and supported by the ILT team.
• If you haven't yet filled our our quick post-event survey (we used Google Forms to create it), please click here! Your feedback will help shape our direction!

Want more? We've got it!

If you missed the webinar, not to worry! Not only will we post a recording in the next few days, but we have provided you with the following resources that you can use immediately. Click here to find:

• PPT slides with visuals explaining how we plan to connect existing and new networks through face to face and digital means
• Clips of CBE teachers discussing how they currently use networks for professional learning
• Google Docs that all of our participants used to brainstorm during the webinar
• Links to additional resources

Coming up next

We've planned a face to face session that will help to build our connections across existing and new professional learning networks. We don't have all the answers, so we will discover them while learning and problem-solving together. The questions, wonderings, solutions, and innovations that you bring will be the basis upon which we facilitate and plan professional learning opportunities with and for you. 

What: Connect in 3-D With Your EdTech PLN! - Face to Face Session
When: Tues, Feb 25, 2014, 4:30 - 6:00 pm
Where: Career & Technology Centre 2336 53 Ave SW
Resources: Check back soon for a link to our session resources in CORE
Audience: All educators. Register now.
We will:

• Participate in engaging activities by connecting with your colleagues, and work on your questions, wonderings, experiments, challenges, and ideas around leveraging educational technology for learning.
• Discuss ideas for your next steps and explorations. How can ILT support your work? What questions do you have for the networks?

Questions? Email us at iltatthecbe@gmail.com or Tweet us @cbeilt


See you online and in person!

EdTech Professional Learning Networks Online & Face to Face - Join us!

You're invited to our kick-off professional learning webinar and face to face event, to support your EdTech Networks!

We're approaching professional learning a bit differently in Innovation & Learning Technology (ILT). We want to help you harness what students and teachers are doing across the CBE and beyond, and collaborate together on the professional learning topics that are most important to you.

We're taking a networked approach because we know it works. We don't have all the answers, so we discover them while learning and problem-solving together. The problems, questions, solutions, and innovations that you bring will be the basis upon which we facilitate and plan professional learning opportunities with and for you. 

What: Create Your EdTech Network - Kick-off Webinar
When: Thurs, Feb 20, 2014 from 4:00 - 5:00 pm
Where: Online in our Blackboard Collaborate session - click here when it's time to join!
Resources: Webinar link & Google Doc that we'll use live 
Audience: All educators. 

What we'll cover:

• Exploring how formal and informal networks shape our professional learning networks (PLN). How do you use your existing networks to support your learning? What have you learned from your networks?
• Time to discuss your questions and inquiries around educational technology. What questions, wonderings, experiments, challenges, and ideas do you have around leveraging educational technology for learning?
• Getting you set-up with the social media of your choice, such as Twitter, our blog, and Google+ to enhance and build upon our synchronous, digital, and face to face learning together. What type(s) of social media would you like to try in order to extend, delve deeply, and stay connected to your colleagues and professional learning communities?

Don't worry if you're unable to join us! We'll post a recording afterwards. You can attend either or both events. Everyone is invited!

What: Connect in 3-D With Your EdTech PLN! - Face to Face Session

When: Tues, Feb 25, 2014 from 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm
Where: Career & Technology Centre 2336 53 Ave SW

Resources: Check back soon for a link to our session resources in CORE

Audience: All educators. Register now.

What we'll cover:

• Time to connect with your colleagues and work on your questions, wonderings, experiments, challenges, and ideas around leveraging educational technology for learning
• Exploration and discussion of your next steps. How can ILT support your work? What questions do you have for the networks?

Questions? Email us at iltatthecbe@gmail.com or Tweet us @cbeilt

See you online and in person!