Summary of Learning for EC&I 832 - Digital Yoga and Stretching Creativity

What is Digital Yoga and How Does It Help One's Creativity?

The above video is a remix that Genna Rodriguez and I co-created.  In this Summary of Learning I went way above and beyond my usual comfort zone... all thanks to the coaxing of Genna! Initially I was going to just create a video which showed some images and videos that connected to the class with a narrative and relaxing music (sort of what I did in ECI 831)... Then Genna shared her idea... Talk about stepping out of one's comfort zone! Next thing I new I was singing! Yes, singing! (Thank goodness for Autotune!!) Bopping to a beat (or trying to...), and reenacting what it was like to be working and... have 5 Google Plus notifications come up demonstrating that everyone else was finished their weekly blog. 

To make this remix we had to summarize our reflections on the course down to a few stanzas... Every syllable counted and had to match the cadence at which Bruno Mars sang in the original song, Uptown Funk. We used Biteable as our main platform for the song, which was then downloaded and mashed with green screen videos of our awesome acting and grooving to the beat as well as Jib Jab for the guest appearance of Katia and Alec. Thank goodness for Genna's Mac which, as I mentioned above, has auto-tune! If there wasn't this option, I don't think I would have sang!

In any case, I had a great time working with Genna on that project and thank her for pushing me to take risks! She is incredibly talented not only with using technology, but singing as well!  Now my kids are running around the house singing this song...

This is it... Reflecting on the Major Project After Journeying Through the Rabbit Hole and Back

This post was co-written with Genna Rodriguez.

Through the Rabbit Hole and Back

This is it... You know when you go on a crazy action-packed vacation, then you come home... You feel glad that you're home and you can get back to routine and normal life... but you also feel changed from your journey. Well as corny as it sounds, that's how I feel. Now that we have journeyed through the Rabbit Hole and back, it's hard to look at everything with the same lens. 

Reflecting and Looking Back

Well, here we are, at the end of the semester.  Genna and I have put in more hours than we can count into this project, but the learning journey and opportunity to ignite dialogue about true technology integration (which always has student learning at the center), has been a real rewarding experience. 

Initially we thought we would just create a framework for 21st Century Learning, as explained in our original posts. This meant identifying the essential skills students would need, based on the ISTE Standards and the work of Michael Fullan, then coming up with the definitions, skills and tools that would guide students in their learning in today's world. Then the Ministry released the Digital Citizenship Continuum. THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING. This made what we had planned seem so undeveloped. So we decided that we would try to match the efforts of the awesome team who had composed the Digital Citizenship Continuum.  After a Skype meeting with Alec and Katia, they said that this sounded like a huge undertaking.  Wow, were they right! Forty-seven articles, videos and blog posts later, we realized just how huge this was.  But we were committed to get it done!

Overall we are quite happy with how it turned out. It was challenging trying to narrow down the essential questions and knowledge that students need, but we decided that it was better to offer these considerations for teachers. The Scope and Sequence is quite easy to navigate (or at least we hope so!) for the grade groupings as we hoped to scaffold learning, so that teachers could see the progression of skills being taught. Teachers are able to view the Scope and Sequence for each of the C's as well as the definition.

  

Under the "Overview" you can review the rationale, an informational video which explains how the C's or Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning fit together, as well as resources - which are our presentations, lesson framework and teacher lessons.  One of the key aspects of our project was not only developing the framework for the  Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning, but to start implementing the concepts into our presentation. As part of our rationale, we had decided that Digital Citizenship would be identified as just Citizenship, as there needs to be connection between the online and offline world. One aspect of our jobs is to train teachers on how to integrate the Digital Citizenship Continuum. In addition to teachers exploring the Continuum, they developed lessons using the new framework we had designed. Going forward we hope that teachers will use the framework template or at least consider the 7C's when planning.  So far 14 teachers from K - 12 have submitted lessons for our database.

You will find our project on our new division website (on the Drupal platform).  Our division is still in the process of building our website, but our project includes everything under the "21st Century Learning" tab (as circled below).  We hope you find our project useful and we welcome any feedback you have.  We will continue to develop our project throughout the year, but we are very proud of what we have accomplished at this point in time! 

Click HERE to visit our project website!

Please visit the dropdown 21st Century Learning from the
Regina Catholic School Division Educational Technology website

Our Video the 7C's of 21st Century Learning

This video can also be found on the website, under the Overview tab. 

Going Forward and Sharing What We Have Learned...

The following are presentations we have provided to teachers over the course of the past few months. Our goal was to explore with teachers how digital citizenship can be infused into curriculum authentically and seamlessly, but also provide opportunities for teachers to understand the literacies or fluencies that students need today. These presentations are located below. 

Note: If you notice some weird formatting issues on the presentations when viewing them in the Scribd window, this is just some issues with Scribd, which is fixed when the presentation is downloaded. 

Elementary Presentation - Digital Citizenship and Balanced Approach to Learning

Digital Cit and Balanced Lit Elem Presentation by Jennifer Stewart

Middle Years Presentation - Digital Citizenship and the Balanced Approach to Learning in Middle Years

Digital Cit and Balanced Lit Middle Years Pres by Jennifer Stewart

High School Presentation - Digital Citizenship and the Balanced Approach to Teaching

Digital Cit and Essential Skills High School Pres FINAL by Jennifer Stewart

Definitions for the Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning

Scope and Sequences for the Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning

Curate S&S by Jennifer Stewart

Critical Thinking S&S by Jennifer Stewart

Connect S&S by Jennifer Stewart

Communicate S&S by Jennifer Stewart

Collaborate S&S by Jennifer Stewart

Create S&S by Jennifer Stewart

Digital Yoga and Stretching One's Creativity

Finally, one last thing. I just wanted to share the Summary of Learning that Genna and I had composed together. Initially I was going to just create a video which showed some images and videos that connected to the class with a narrative and relaxing music (sort of what I did in ECI 831)... then Genna shared an idea... Talk about stepping out of one's comfort zone! Next thing I new I was singing! Yes, singing! (Thank goodness for Autotune!!) Bopping to a beat (or trying to...), and reenacting what it was like to be working and... have 5 Google Plus notifications come up demonstrating that everyone else was finished their weekly blog. 

In any case, I had a great time working with Genna on that project and thank her for pushing me to take risks! Now my kids are running around the house singing this song...

Major Project Update - Digital Citizenship and the Balanced Approach to Teaching at the High School Level

This past week, Genna and I finished off our presentation for high school teachers who were signed up to take our professional development session on "Digital Citizenship and the Balanced Approach to Teaching at the High School Level".  The purpose of the session was to explore with teachers the digital citizenship continuum, plan lessons integrating digital citizenship into curricular learning, then finally delve deep into the Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning. 

Some of the challenges of this session include helping teachers of curricular areas (ie: Math) find authentic ways of integrating digital citizenship. However, through discussion with these teachers, we noticed that as soon as technology was integrated into the lesson, there were definitely opportunities to explore digital citizenship. One teacher who was designing a math lesson around... (some complicated math concept that used the word "binomials"...) had groups of students record a lesson Khan Academy style for various concepts. After discussion, we realized that not all students would have devices for engaging in the project, so one of the elements that had to be investigated was the essential question, "Does everyone in your school have equal opportunities as far as technology use is concerned?" or "Do all students have the opportunity to be involved in a digital society?" So in this lesson, this teacher had to explore access of technology with the students, yet not in a way that would make any individuals feel embarrassed. 

Teachers had the opportunity to also use our Essential Skills Framework Lesson Template for lesson planning, which most found fairly easy to navigate once it was explained and samples were explored. 

Providing time for teachers to collaborate and build lessons was well received by the teachers. It will be great to have lessons from the high school level as part of our data base of digitally integrated lessons. 

Click on the link to access the presentation if it is not available via Scribd. **Please note that in Scribd, documents sometimes lose formatting, or words move around. Therefore, if you notice format issues, it was fine previous to uploading to Scribd.

Digital Cit and Essential Skills High School Pres FINAL

Part of afternoon was also a investigation of the Essential Skills and exploring some of the digital tools teachers may wish to utilize in their classroom as part of amplifying learning. In analyzing technology, teachers were encouraged to examine effectiveness with this inverted Bloom's strategy that we devised.

Digital Tool Questions for Analysis

Many of the teachers who attended our session were already integrating technology effectively in the classroom, so our session also became a great opportunity to share ideas and bounce our project's framework off a group who had the tech-savvy knowledge to give honest feedback. The only concern that really seemed to pop up with high school teachers was the time to delve into some ways the curriculum could be leveraged. Many thought that finding other teachers and classrooms to connect with via Skype, could be a bit of a challenge many noted as the class-times in a high school schedule can be quite confining. Time seemed to be the issue even when looking at how to digitally create, as some teachers stated that they felt the pressures of curriculum. So going forward, our job might be helping teachers see the benefits of having students share their understanding beyond paper and pencil or other traditional methods, and move towards other forms of summative assessment.

One final part of the day that I want to share, was that we spent about an hour planning and sharing a few ideas for the Red Cross Pink Day on February 24th, 2016. The different high schools had different visions for how this would unfold, from wearing pink t-shirts and having a tweet-up to potential guest speakers. Some teachers were interested in integrating creating digital artefacts (similar to the Student First Anti-Bullying Project), that would be shared at a division level. 

One of the greatest successes of the day was that all teachers saw the need for integrating digital citizenship on a regular basis into curriculum, but also supported events such as Pink Day to further generate awareness for Anti-Bullying and Digital Citizenship. 

In conclusion, as an update for the Scope and Sequence aspect of our project, Genna and I  are now starting the process of building our webpages on Drupal, as the Scopes and Sequences for the 6 Essential Skills are pretty much completed. We have yet to capture some of the digital stories to help actualize the Essential Skills, but we realize that this will be part of the "work in progress". 

Professional Development and the Major Project

Part of the major project that Genna Rodriguez and I are working on with the development of a Scope and Sequence of the Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning (7C's) is to develop professional development presentations for teachers in our school division. Professional development is a key element in order for adoption of these essential skills among teachers and students, which puts the focus on the transferable skills students need to learn for success in the 21st century. One of the goals of our division is to provide coaching in educational technology for all levels of users in Technology adoption. So part of our Educational Technology coaching model is to help teachers see beyond the flash of digital tools, and instead on how the tools can leverage and improve learning.

So far we have developed and delivered the following sessions:

Teaching with Technology - Session focused on integrating digital tools based on effective instructional practice. Instructional practice focuses on the work of Marzano, Pickering and Pollock, from the book, Classroom Instruction that Works (2001) as well as Dean, Hubbell, Pitler and Stone, in Classroom Instruction that Works - 2nd Edition (2012). With this session we took the work that had been previously developed by individuals in our department, and combined the concepts to fit within our "7C's". More information on this session can be found on one of our department resource sites, "Technoteaching".

Digital Citizenship and the Balanced Approach to Literacy for Primary Teachers - This session focused on 4 elements; 1) Help teachers "unpack" the Digital Citizenship Continuum, and the 3 pillars of learning 2) Develop lessons that focus on curricular outcomes with the authentic integration of Digital Citizenship; 3) Explore the Essential Skills of 21st Century Learning and how the 7C's can help students develop life long digital skills;  4) Within the context of each of the Essential Skills, explore strategies for integrating a variety of digital tools in Balanced Literacy and develop "Balanced Literacy Tech Task Cards" for student learning stations.

Here is an example of a lesson with Digital Citizenship created by Kristina Boutilier who attended our session: "Divergent Perspectives" and gave permission to share this lesson on our website.

Digital Citizenship and the Balanced Approach to Literacy for Middle Years Teachers - This session is very similar to the Primary Session, with the focus being on essential skills for middle years students based on the technology they would regularly incorporate into learning.

Digital Citizenship and the Balanced Approach to Technology Integration for High School Teachers - This session will be delivered next week, with the difference being we are going to focus on digital integration for all the 7C's, but from the perspective of a variety of subject areas. Rather than focusing on creating Tech Task Cards, we will focus on how the 7C's can connect learning from multiple subject areas. In connecting with other teachers in our division, we have a curating expert, Gaetan Hammond a Teacher Librarian, to help explore research and organizing skills with teachers for part of our session. We are fortunate to have such fantastic experts to assist us in their speciality. In addition to exploring curating, we hope to examine with teachers how they can empower their students to create and remix with digital tools as a way of sharing learning, communicate and collaborate with digital tools, and explore formative assessment tools (like Plickers, Kahoot and Quizzes) for increasing communication about learning.

by  katmeresin 

The biggest challenge will be helping teachers see the benefits to integrating these tools, especially when some may feel like they do not have the time to investigate how to digitally integrate. These feelings of lack of time are compounded when a teacher may only see those students for 1 hour a day. In any case, our approach is that teachers should choose the tools which help leverage the 7C's, that they find to be easy to integrate and that help learning. To assist teachers with coming to their own understanding of how to use these tools to leverage learning, we will be giving them time to collaborate and "play" in digital sandbox.

In addition to planning PD, we have been continuing to develop the Scope and Sequence for the other C's as well as research other approaches to integrating technology into learning.

Our potential new logo! Thoughts? 

Found a few great articles to incorporate, which include:

• EdSurge's 21st Century Skills
• 5 Things You Need to Know about 21st Century Learning
• How to Champion the 4C's in the Classroom
• Global  Digital Citizen Foundation  - 21st Century Fluencies

Finally in addition to this planning, Genna redesigned our logo incorporating images from our powerPoint presentation into the "gears" of the Essential Skills. We would love some feedback. Keep the old or use the new design?