Day 38: Dreaming as Big as We Can

Recently, I had the opportunity to spend a day visiting the grade 12 World Issues class at Nottawasaga Pines Secondary School. What a visit! The class is currently engaged in an inquiry project related to the United Nations 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development. I should also add that their teacher is involved in New Pedagogies for Deep Learning.

The class established a goal: to educate others about the UN Sustainability Goals and to prompt people to take action to achieve these goals. Based on the interest they felt most connected to and the issues they felt passionate about, students divided into seven groups. Each group chose one of the 17 global goals to focus on. (#npssglobalgoals)

This inquiry project had some parameters established by the teacher. Student work had to include:

• learning about the issue

• sharing learning with others  
• blogging about it and using social media to help achieve their goal
• taking action - at a local level and a global level
• identifying connections to Fullan’s Six Cs
• documenting their learning journey

For me, part of being in the class for the day involved interviewing some of the students about their learning as they launched into this project. I have to admit, I was quite emotional as I listened to what students had to say about their learning, their teacher, the choice and trust that was given to them, the risks they were taking, and the fact that they felt empowered to make a real difference. As one student said, “Dreaming as big as we can...going all out.” Their excitement was evident. I also found it interesting that not once did the conversation with these grade 12 students centre around marks. It was all about the learning, achieving their goal, working together and making a difference.  

The students have wonderful ideas about how they can share their learning and have already been very active in using social media to spread the word and in planning their local and global actions. They have already established partnerships with other departments in their school, community organizations, elementary schools, and global organizations. To get a glimpse of what is happening, check out their blog posts on: http://thegreentimberwolf.blogspot.ca/.

I can’t wait to see what happens as their learning continues. I am confident that this class will make a difference. Additionally, I believe the learning opportunities facilitated by their teacher will also make a difference in their lives in helping to foster a mindset and a skill set that will serve them long after their high school days.

Day 37: It's not always going to be easy

I've been working with some awesome Co-op teachers at Elmvale DHS over the past few weeks. Bill Neilly and Taudie Mcleaming have chosen to build parts of their course in D2L for a couple of reasons:

• help with continuous intake in co-op
• provide alternative ways for students to submit reflections. The traditional reflective journal can be submitted as an audio recording or text submission using D2L 
• provide access to an app that can be used on Android and iPhones for the ePortfolio tool within D2L. Students can capture video and images that demonstrate their skills. These captures can be reflected on and will be shared with the teacher
• provide descriptive feedback on student work through audio 
• provide a way for students to listen to text lessons, no matter what device they are on 

Since we last met they've been populating their course with materials while I've been troubleshooting the easiest way to include a simple audio player at the top of any page with significant amounts of text.  So a page would look like the image below. 

After running my problem by the Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching contact from SMCDSB (and he called upon someone else for input) we found a couple of options, each requiring a bit of tinkering or at least multiple steps to set up. 

Having to deal with a multi-step process got me thinking about the impact of mobile and user friendly technology on education. There are times when having easy, quick-to-use technology is definitely an asset. However, I wonder what the impact is of only using easy, user-friendly digital tools? Are we missing anything when we only use the easy technology? Students need to experience having to fight with and figure something out to develop skills such as; what are the steps you go through when things don't work easily? What is worth fighting for, tinkering and figuring out and at what point is it becoming too complicated and distracting from the learning? 

While not everyone is going to become computer scientists and have a deep working knowledge of the circuitry and functioning of computers and networks, I think it's important to provide opportunities to develop confidence and resiliency to work through problems and troubleshoot. This can only be done by pushing ourselves to find ways for the technology to do new things that work for us. 

Basically, it's NOT always going to be easy and throughout the frustration I have to remind myself that this is a GOOD thing. I'm developing important skills. I just need to make sure I have great folks around me such as Bill, Taudie and Michael to help me problem solve.