Edcamp Waterloo Voices

It's been over a week since Edcamp Waterloo Region. I think it's taken me this long to come down off my "edcamp high" and gather my thoughts about the event. As an organizer of the event, lots of time and energy went into the planning and preparing for Waterloo Region's first ever edcamp and to see it come and go is a little surreal.

When I set out with this idea of hosting an event on my "home turf", I had this lingering question of "if you build it, will they come"? I am a firm believer that the people that are meant to be there, will be. It is the participants that really drive events such as edcamps. The attendees of EdcampWR were second to none, with representatives from eleven different Ontario school boards! As our guests arrived early on a Saturday morning to dive into the intricacies of educational issues, I couldn't help to note the number of familiar faces from my own PLN, known through twitter avatars and/or face to face networking. It was fantastic to come together to share, discuss, debate, challenge each other, and continue the online conversations that often fuel our edu-passions. It is the quality of these participants and their contributions that made EdcampWR the success that it was.

In noticing those that joined us for EdcampWR, it seemed a meeting of like minds, like we were speaking to the converted. I couldn't help but notice those missing from the edcamp conversation and wondering how do we get others involved in these important discussions? I believe it's important to express opinions and consider various point of views on educational issues...including the technophobes, the anti-gamers, and those anywhere else on the spectrum of technology use. These voices are important to provide balance and context to current challenges facing innovative teaching practices. These voices are necessary to move forward, to change.

There were registrants that admittedly decided against attending and some that left early because they were intimidated by the conversations, topics, and even evident PLNs. As an educator, I find this very concerning. I feel somewhat responsible to make sure everybody is welcomed and invited to contribute (in what ever capacity) and to meet learners new to concepts "where they are at". How do we make sure our techno-babble and edu-speak doesn't hinder or make the conversation inaccessible to some participants? Do we need to be more aware and respectful of various entry points? How can we make our messages more accessible to newcomers?

I also feel that these individuals have a responsibility to take action to make sure their needs are being met. If a conversation is "too out there" or "above your head" then a decision needs to be made; will you move out of your comfort zone and learn something new (as we ask our students to do daily), or will you choose to get involved in a different conversation (that better suits your interests and needs)? There's always the argument that none of the sessions applied to a specific individual. To those, I challenge you to start a new conversation, one that you feel passionately about, one for which you can feel good about contributing. Like many things in life, what you put in is directly related to what you get out. We don't allow our students to disengage so why would we accept this of ourselves?

I recognize that there are all types of learners and that participation in edcamp-styled events often requires a risk-taking, self-directed individual. To those that fit this description, I applaud you for getting involved, sharing your stories and voices, and continuing the sometimes messy learning journey. To those that aren't comfortable with this, how can we include you in the conversations and hear your voices? It's YOU that I want to hear from the most!!!

If you would like to see what over 150 online participants were saying in the backchannel on Twitter, check out Edcamp Waterloo Region Tweets.

Student Showcase at Edcamp Waterloo Region

This is a cross post from the Gill-Ville Class blog.

On Saturday, March 31st most of the students in Gill-Ville attended Edcamp Waterloo Region, our areas first ever edcamp! The students were involved in a technology showcase session where they each presented a project or tech tool to other students in the session and teachers that were attending the event. The Gill-Villeans represented us very well and impressed educators from eleven different school boards across Ontario. It is safe to say that they stole the show! If you are a Twitter user you can check out the #edcampwr hash tag to see what educators are saying about our students and event. Our students shared social media sites such as Twitter, Edmodo, and blogging. Some students shared iPad apps and multimedia projects like our Pan-Canada ePub project. The Gill-Villeans rose to the challenge and inspired educators to learn and try new technology tools. You can learn more about our class showcase sharing by reading a blog post written by a well known Ontario Edublogger, Doug Peterson, who came to see us the day before and wrote all about us! http://dougpete.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/the-day-before-edcamp/

The students also had a large part in helping prepare for the event. In the days leading up to Edcamp Waterloo, the students were eager to show off their baking skills as they made a variety of muffins, cookies, scones, and other treats. They were such a big hit that many educators have tweeted us looking for recipes to some of our goodies! The lemon Oreos that Miss Broderick taught us how to make were quickly devoured and made us famous!

The students in our class also invited Edcamp Waterloo participants to bring donations for the Spring Food Drive. Attendees rose to the challenge and we collected 76 items!

The students that participated received special event T-Shirts from Smart Pen Central and apple swag from one of our sponsors. To show our appreciation, the students created Thank You messages that we sent digitally. Check out the student blogs for their recap of the event and special messages to our supporters.

Mathew: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Mathew50/edcamp-waterloo-region-3/
Logan: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Logan608/edcamp-waterloo-region-2/
Kara: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Kara57/edcamp-waterloo-region-4/
Rachel: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Rachel609/edcamp-waterloo-region/

The students in Gill-Ville have been learning about various ways to help the environment and reduce our carbon footprint. After learning about the polar bear migration and issues with climate change on their habitat, the students felt a call to action! One thing we decided to do was to raise awareness about the waste humans create. Our class already shows leadership for the school recycling and composting programs, so we decided to go to the next level and learn about eWaste. We also challenged Edcamp participants to bring their old electronics (pictured above). During Earth Week, we will also invite the Ryerson community to drop off their eWaste! Read our eWaste blog posts here:

Jacob’s post: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Jacob1095/ewaste/
Emilee’s post: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Emily1271/ewaste-2/
Bailey’s post: http://kidblog.org/Gill-Ville/Bailey270/ewaste-3/

Moving On Over

I have been playing with various blogs and formats and have decided to move away from Edublogs and set up camp here on this space.  The next few posts are archives from the Edublogs page, which will now become strictly personal ramblings... This site will be for professional reflections and dialogue, as rare as they might be! ;-)

And This Is Just The Beginning

This is a cross post from the Global Read Aloud blog.

Our class, known as Gill-Ville (@Gill_Villeans on twitter) is participating in the Global Read Aloud Project for a second time. We had such an amazing experience last year that there was no question whether we would participate again this year.

We had the common goal this week to read the prologue and up to chapter six. We had two trips this week as well as a PD Day, we are already a little behind, but that’s quite alright! So far we are enjoying the story. Students have joined a special group on Edmodo to talk with other students about the book. We have already answered a few polls on Edmodo that asked us which country we lived in, our predictions for the book, and whether we’ve read it before or not. We are also contributing to the online wiki where classes are posting their work using a variety of web tools. In our class, we started by making predictions using LinoIt .

We then turned the discussion to whether or not "life everlasting" would be a good thing. Here is a screen shot of some of the responses that were shared during our discussion.

As we began reading the first chapter, we discovered many new or unusual words in the story. Students worked in partners and used the “Use Your Handwriting” app on the iPad to create personalized word lists from the chapter.

This story is a novel that does not include many pictures or images for the students to look at. This gave us a great opportunity to work on visualizing. This task is very tricky for many of us who struggle with auditory learning so we began working together to describe the setting using the SMARTBoard. Here is our representation of the road to Treegap as described in the first chapter.

The text then goes on the describe the wooded area beyond the road that is very important to the plot of the story. Students listened carefully to find details in the text that they could draw. Here is an example of the wood as visualized by Emilee.

As we moved on to chapter two, we started to meet some of the characters in the story. The first character we meet is Mae Tuck, the mother of two boys and wife to Tuck. The text provides a very detailed description of Mae that we used to help us visualize her appearance. In the computer lab today the students used SumoPaint, an online art program that can be used at home, to create their drawings of Mae Tuck. From this picture below, can you tell us something about her? You can see the students’ drawings and descriptions of Mae Tuck on their blog posts from September 22!


We can't wait to get back at it next week as we look forward to Skyping and chatting with some classes about the book!

Why the Tool Matters

My written contribution to “Why ______ Matters” was inspired by an incredible year in a congregated special education class in a brand new, technology-focused school. I shared my story of the amazing successes my students experienced, largely in part to the vast amount of new technology available to them. The topic is very near and dear to my heart as I watched these first percentile learners connect, communicate, and collaborate with students in regular classrooms around the world using social media. Simply by having access to “cool tools” such as iPads and Livescribe smartpens, the playing field was not only leveled a little, but the stigma of being in a special class was removed. These students were no longer ashamed to need accommodations and were actually very proud to be in “the class that tries out all the technology”. Selecting the right tools is always a concern, whether it’s computer technology or art supplies, so I’ve really explored the use of many different technologies and strategies. That being said, I am convinced that the technology used this year is what made the difference in my students’ education. They pick up these tools and use them without any pre-teaching. In fact, they are often experimenting and finding tricks and tips that they teach me! For many of our special education students, this is HUGE as they become teachers and leaders (for some it’s a new phenomenon). I have watched confidence and participation increase ten-fold simply by adding a mobile device or a web connection to a lesson. The immediate and constant feedback that many digital tools provide is perfect for our students with attention issues and the motivation factor simply can not be ignored. For many students in our special education programs, this is key. If we can engage these learners by using appropriate tools then we have to be doing more (as a system) to provide better access to students with special needs. I could go on and on and on about this…but I won’t (for now).

I knew when I was preparing for Unplug’d that this is the story I needed to share. I had much more difficulty deciding how I would share this beyond my personal narrative. Writing about this topic in a concise manner was impossible for me, so I decided to stick with what I know, and for me – that’s poetry. I’m not sure if it’s due to years working with primary students or just my innate love for the sound of rhymes, but for some reason it was so much easier for me to be creative with this “essay”. I still struggled with keeping it small. The size requirements set for our publication was a challenge for many but I really didn’t know how I would take my poem and literally cut it in half! This is where the small group collaboration really changed my game… I wasn’t sure how it would go having others pick apart my work, my art. I mean, how can you easily critique poetry? Well…they did. It was painful pulling apart my work and trying to decide what should stay, go, or be tweaked. I certainly could NOT have done this without the insights of my group members. I am really grateful that each member was honest and direct, while sensitive at the same time. I am pleased with the changes and suggestions provided by these awesome individuals, and in the end, their input made it better.

Read the original poem in its entirety here:
Why the Tool Matters – Unplugd11

This is an exciting week, reliving the Unplug’d vibe, as our chapter has been released, our videos are also being released, and a #ds106radio chat will take place on Thursday evening with the chapter two authors. If you’d like to take part, you can post questions HERE before Thursday at 9:00 EDT or you can listen to ds106radio and tweet along with us!

Unplugd 11

I have been struggling where to begin with the many thoughts and emotions floating around in this body of mine after attending #Unplug'd11.



As I begin my weekend of networking and learning at #CATC11. I am bombarded with questions from my WRDSB tweeps about the event. I find myself not knowing where to begin. Do I start with the events, the structure of the weekend? You can go to the official site for all that. Do I start with the purpose and artifacts created? Nope, those can also be found online with the epub releases. Do I start sharing stories and tales of connections made? Well, I could but many of those can be seen in the flickr photos or through the stories shared in our document. Do I explain the impact this had on me? I'm not sure my words can even begin to describe the intense range of feelings I have around the relationships developed and the many "ah ha's" and touching moments. I had hair-on-end styled goosebumps this past weekend more times than I can count. How do you even attempt to recount the experiences that led to those moments?

What I can say is that I've been forever changed. Each and every one of these people that told their stories, shared a song, engaged in down time play, or simply smiled and listened somehow made this weekend what it was. I don't think that any one of us going into this could even imagine what would occur. Although we began with a goal in mind - to unplug and connect to collaborate on a published document about what matters in Canadian education - so much more happened. When people asked me what I learned, I think I can say that "face to face relationships matter" and that "story telling is important". The other things I learned were all lessons from people, not programs, tools, or books.

Even as I sit here in my room at Kempenfelt conference centre, alone, I hear Melanie McBride's words about autonomy and how if I want to sit alone and reflect, that OK. This is my fourth time attending this camp and I always wanted to make the most of each and every moment, working late in the room with others, helping and soaking in everything there is to learn. I would have NEVER taken a break at 3:30 of DAY 1 to go off by myself to write. Thank you Melanie for reminding me that I don't always have to be "ON".

I have been having the "Unplug'd tinglies" as Alec Couros called them ever since the event ended. I have been glued to my screen, looking at the photos being posted, the tweets coming through my feed, and the blog posts that are slowly trickling out a few each day. Each time I see one, I immediately feel that heart in throat feeling that brings me right back to that time and space. When I read Daryl Bambic's words on her blog, I was speechless. She was able to capture many of the emotions I had been experiencing and articulated them much better than I would have. I agree with Jaclyn Calder's comparison to summer camp on her blog and can relate to the words shared by Alana Callan and Kelly Power. I am touched by Danika Barker's story and related to many of the feelings Lorna Costantini expressed with her initial reflections. When I read Rob Fisher's words, I am transported back to that moment when his simple phrase "I spent 3 days in Algonquin park at the Northern Edge with 37 people that care so much about education that it hurts." literally took the breath out of the room. Unplug'd lives on with all that is shared.

I was also reminded of the power of music and how much it means to me. From the canoe serenade by Bryan Jackson, to the campfire tunes with Stephen Hurley, to the introduction of ds106radio by Giulia Forsythe, to the chats with Andy McKeil about my favourite band, music was a big part of this experience for me, as it is in my daily life. This weekend reminded me that I have to feed this part of my soul frequently. Music lovers, share on!



I also learned that I need to make changes with what I do with my time. I am spending WAY too much time in from of a screen and working. I need to unplug more often to feed my soul. I already knew that water, being near it or in it, grounds me. I need to spend more time near water. Thanks Todd and the folks at Northern Edge Algonquin for helping me to remember this. In fact, as soon as I press POST here, I'm heading down to the water with a book and my beverage of choice (I know you Unplug'ers will find that hard to believe) to enjoy the sunshine before I re-engage with the current learning that is going on here in this time and space...

We're All Art Teachers Today

This is a cross post from the Live Learning with Livescribe Blog.

Today we used our livescribe pen to record instructions to demonstrate how to draw an item of choice. I was amazed at how this tool allowed for differentiation amongst my special education class, as the complexity of drawings greatly differed, as did the oral descriptions that were attached. What was even more amazing was watching them beam with pride as each students’ pencast was played for the rest of the class to attempt the drawing. They loved being the “drawing teacher” and it didn’t matter which picture looked the best, had the most detail, or even the best explanation, the livescribe pencast provided the auditory and visual connection that allowed each student to be successful when replicating the pictures. I was especially pleased to see one of my ASD students shine today when most class mates commented that his drawing was the best! I just had to include his pencast here! Enjoy!

Jacob's How to Draw
brought to you by Livescribe