MPTCA - My Sessions

All About Blogging - This was my first ever my double session.  While I enjoyed having longer than 75 minutes, 3 hours was just too long! 

Who is that?  And what is he eating?

We spent a good 2 hours establishing why teachers and students should blog, setting up an RSS reader

and subscribing to blogs.  We then tried out three blogging platforms (Posterous, KidBlogs, Blogger) and then set up our own.  No wonder everyone was exhausted!  Feel free to check out the session here and play around with some of the blogging platforms.  There are instructions, usernames and passwords to try each platform out. 

Technology Integration for Social Studies Div 3ish - This was my second double session and I think I had better pacing for this one!  The best part of this session, my junior high social teacher Mr. Yas attended!  My theme was Create, Collaborate and Critically Think.  However with what was happening in Japan, we went a little off course (teachable moment) as I showed my #japan twitter stream, Al Jazeera English and The Boston Picture as alternative ways to get current events.  The majority of the session you can find here.  I think I started off strong with creating a fake Facebook page and different ways to use audio.  We deviated slightly off course here and there, taking a looking at The Week in Rap and National Geographic Typical Person video.  I think that teachers walked away with some new ideas and had a fair amount of time to play with them.

All in all a most excellent teachers' convention!

What's Up? (March 7-11)

Thanks to everyone that has been Tweeting, Facebooking and following along at this blog.  I really appreciate the comments and the feedback. 

Here is what my week looks like:

Monday/Tuesday - Teepee Creek Technology Project days. 

Tuesday evening - Peace Wapiti Academy Parent Council Presentation.

Wednesday - AM at PWA working with staff on their flexibility course.  PM Networked Educational Leader session with Sandy McDonald

Thursday - All About Blogging 12:10-3pm in the PWA Computer lab.

Friday - Intro to Moodle 9-10:15 with Nicole Gilles in CP 85, I will be the trusty assistant.  Technology Integration in Social Studies Div 3 10:35-1:25 in the PWA Computer lab.

Some items to check out....

• Mighty Peace Teachers' Convention program looks fabulous, do you know what you are going to?
• Technology Integration Matrix - where do you fit, where do you want to be?
• Take a minute and comment on the PWSD Community of Practice teacher Blog.  
• How could you use this video?

Have a fabulous week and I hope to see everyone Thursday or Friday at Teachers' Convention!


I totally stole this idea from George Couros and his staffroom blog.

Cultivating a Digital Classroom (Part 3 of 3)

This group rocks!


Becky, Daniel, Terrina, Lyla, Stacey, Anna, Marion, Shawn, Natalie, Darcy, Sharolyn, Adair & Sarah

 Our three day cohort came to an end on Friday, here you can find Part 1 and Part 2.

Friday started out with a reconnection with our PLN. Revisiting Twitter, update your profile and tweet.  Connect with professionally relevant Facebook pages and look into RSS again.



Anna and Marion's Pecha Kucha

 Our second activity was a Pecha Kucha.  Usually this is 20 slides advancing every 20 seconds presentation.  Since we were pressed for time, we used 10 slides advancing every 10 seconds around the topic "Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century" 

Digital Classroom - Pecha Kucha

View more presentations from jenclevette.

All groups did a fabulous job with the very short amount of time that I allotted them!  We then used a Moodle forum to reflect how we could use this technique in the classroom.



The Savanna Ladies!



Until lunch everyone had time to work on projects.  Some worked in Moodle creating courses, other explored Web 2.0 tools or fought with Word trying to make forms work.  Work was done and laughs were shared.

Adair, Becky, Daniel and Natalie working on their Google Preso!

Before we broke for lunch each person was given some digital scavenger hunt clues.  Such things as old technology, new technology, fun, jump, and the funniest thing you could find.  The assignment was to go out and take pictures with what you had.  Phone, iPod, camera or borrowed camera.  When we got back from lunch we collaborated on this Google Presentation.

This group had the "best" scavenger hunt pictures,
can you find them?

 We experienced first hand the positives (I can add the pictures and you do the captions) and negatives (who deleted my slide!) of working on a collaborative document. 
We also had to figure out how to get images off devices and re size and flip them for the presentation.
A short discussion on blogging and the day was over!

My intention was to end the day with this video



But all groups were far to busy trying to get all their last tweets in to be entered into the draw for the Flip Cameras  :0

Thanks so much to my fabulous group.  They were challenging and engaged, fun and a great colleagues to learn and reflect with.  

Introducing PWSD's Community of Practice

Another little project!

From September 2006 until August 2010 Alberta Education ran a research project around 1-1 laptops.  When this research project ended Alberta Education had another call for proposals to create a Community of Practice to extend the 1-1 project.  Peace Wapiti is practicipating in this project with Division 3 teachers around 21st Century Skill development.  You can see the entire proposal here.

For this project we have 24 Peace Wapiti  Division 3 teachers that are using the TPACK model to inform effective instruction around the integration of technology.  These teachers have committed to three face to face meetings, one collaboration day of choice, sharing their resources on Ecommunity and reflecting on the Community of Practice Blog.

Please drop by the blog and see what we have been up to!

Cultivating a Digital Classroom (Day 2 of 3)

The whole gang.

Another fabulous day with an amazing group of teachers.  Thanks for hanging in there as I coughed, sneezed and made the FM system make horrible noises.  All of the resources for the day can be found here, under intermediate.

We started the day by signing up for Twitter.  I just finished posting on the PWSD twits below.



 

Team PWA

After a little inspirational video, we shared what we had been doing in our classrooms in the two months since we had last met.  In August when we met we spent the session working on creating) There were some amazing stories shared about what worked and what didn't work.  PWA teachers shared students were using what they learned in their classrooms, Prezi and Glogster, and were transferring that to other classes and their personal life.  Bezanson shared this fabulous website, A Story Before Bedtime, that they highlighted to parents at the literacy parent's night.  And there were a few that just could not hide their love for Moodle! There were also some challenges shared.  Quite a few teachers have created Facebook groups for their classes but students are just not joining.  Technology had failed at times, files were lost or computer labs were full.  However, the good definitely outweighed the bad.

Team Bezanson

Team Sexsmith

Another video, Changing Education Paradigms and short discussion before we set to work on designing some technology projects for the upcoming weeks.

After lunch we launched into using Outlook to subscribe to RSS.  Since my voice was going and the technology failed me slightly, I created the video below to add some clarity to what I was trying to demonstrate. (This is 2nd only to Twitter in my personal technology toolkit) 

Thanks to all the teachers that participated, they day could not have happened without you.  Looking forward to our next meeting in January!