My Storify of #bit14

Bring IT Together 2 - Day 3

It's been a couple of days since Bring IT Together 2 ended and my brain is still spinning.  What an incredible 3 days of learning, collaborating, and networking.  A list of the workshops is here - for many of the workshops, a link to the presentation can be found in the right-hand menu.

Friday began with a keynote from Ron Canuel of the Canadian Education Association.  He reminded us that technology is an important portal for the imagination of teachers and that our students are on the other side of that portal.  He also reminded us that students are the constant (age, neurological development) and that teachers are the variable.  We need to be courageous for without courage, there can be no change.

I loved how the focus of Bring IT Together 2 was on pedagogy - how can we be better teachers? - and that the technology is there as a tool.  As a result, the workshops were, for the most part, about improving our teaching by reaching their students where they are at and through their interests.  I also loved how there was a workshop offered in French during each session.  Not all of the French-language workshops were useful for me as a teacher in an English school but the opportunity to connect with other French-speaking teachers and to have workshops that were geared to the different needs of a French-language classroom were invaluable.

Lisa Noble presented some Web 2.0 tools that can be useful in the FSL classroom.  In particular, I think I am going to give Padlet.com a try.  I like that it allows for students to contribute to a class discussion and then to be able to reorganize those ideas.

I really appreciated Lisa Unger's presentation on Twitter as a tool to practice historical perspective.  I think of all the workshops I attended the last few days, this is the one that I am most likely to implement in my class this semester.  Lisa has her students take on the role of a Canadian teenager and then tweet about their experiences during the different time periods studied in the Grade 10 Canada since World War I course.  It's too late for me to implement as a semester-long project, but I'm thinking that as a project for the post-war years, it has a lot of potential.  You can check out her students' work here.

Rodrigue St-Jean & Josée Hébert presented a "Matrice d'intégration des technologies" to help French-speaking teachers integrate technology using the SAMR model.  Lots of great examples for different types of learning situations (e.g. communicate, collaborate, etc.).

George Couros closed out the conference with an inspiring keynote on Leading Innovative Change.  I've followed George on Twitter for years so it was a highlight for me to get to hear him speak.

George Couros

A few highlights from his presentation:

• The smartest person in the room is the room.
• If you don't understand what a hashtag is / does, you are becoming illiterate.
• Seth Godin:  Transformational leaders don't start by denying the world around them.  Instead, they describe a future they'd like to create instead.
• Change is the opportunity to do something amazing.
• General Eric Shinseki:  If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.
• Technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers can be transformational.
• To innovate, disrupt your routine.
• Take risks.
• Be uncomfortable.
• Share your ideas.
• Learning first, Technology second.

This was my first ECOO conference - it definitely won't be my last!  My notes from Day 3 are here.

If you attended the conference, what is your takeaway from Bring IT Together 2?

One last view of the Falls

Experiencing History with the Canadian War Museum's Supply Line

If you’re looking for a hands-on opportunity for your students to discover the Canadian experience in the First World War, you need to check out the Canadian War Museum’s new program “Supply Line.” 

Supply Line is a discovery box of WWI artifacts that students are able to pick up, inspect, test, and even try on.  There are 22 objects from WWI (5 authentic artifacts and 17 reproductions) representing different aspects of the Canadian experience in Europe.  Some of the highlights for my students included a soldier’s dress jacket, a steel helmet, a trench periscope, a small box respirator (gas mask), and a gas alarm rattle. 

Also in the box are contextual photographs, artifact information labels such as you would find in a museum display, and a binder of teacher resources.  The teacher resources include additional background information on each artifact and a series of lesson plans, with student handouts, based on different themes, topics, and cross-curricular connections.  All information is provided in French and English.

Service Dress Jacket with contextual photos and information labels

Supply Line is a free program - the Canadian War Museum even covers all shipping costs.  Boxes are loaned out for two-week periods and there is a limit of 1 loan per semester per school.  While the Canadian War Museum is unable to guarantee a specific request, you can specify your preferred month when you submit your application.  I submitted my request in mid-September for delivery any time between October and early January.  I received an email 2 weeks later indicating a box could be delivered on October 15.  Demand for the boxes will likely grow as more schools hear about this great opportunity so get your request in soon.

My students really enjoyed this opportunity to interact with history and watching them try to figure out what some of the more obscure objects were used for (and which students already had the answer!) was a great opportunity for me to observe their thinking and analytical processes, too.

The Canadian War Museum has put in a ton of work to make this a really valuable resource and it is definitely worth checking out!

Improving Feedback and Student Self-Analysis

With thanks to Colleen Lee-Hayes and her blog, I discovered the Google Docs Add-On "TextHelp Study Skills" and thought it could be useful in a lot of subject areas.

TextHelp Study Skills

Use this add-on to Google Docs to highlight key information that can then be grouped, sorted, and exported into a new Google Doc for later use. 

Ideas for Student Use in the Classroom:

• In Language classes, students could use the different colour to identify required language components in assignments.

• In Geography, History, Civics, Social Science classes, students could use a colour to identify the facts that they've included in their assignment.

• In English, students could identify quotations used in their essays.  (Use a different colour for each book if doing a comparative essay or, one colour for quotations from the novel and another colour for quotations from secondary sources.)

• Students could use the "Collect Highlights" feature to collate the highlighted information into an overview document that they could then share with their teacher.  

• For study purposes, students could highlight their notes and then export their highlights to create a page of key facts / ideas / etc to study.

Ideas for Teacher Use in the Classroom

• Teachers could also use the tool to provide visual feedback --> highlight the error and provide students with a legend identifying what each colour means.  Students can quickly see where, what type, and how many errors they are making.

• If teachers are the ones using the tool, we could use the "Collect" option and then go over some sample errors with the class quickly and easily.

Setting It Up:

• Link to the add-on:  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/texthelp-study-skills/fjgimeiehjeaammngbkmpmjikfpknmpf?hl=en

• The first time, students add this "add-on" to Google Docs by opening a Google Doc, clicking on "Add-Ons" (in the File / Edit / View / etc menu of the Document) and then "Get Add-Ons" and then searching for "TextHelp Study Skills."

• Alternatively, you could provide the above link to students to authorize.

• Once they've added the program, for future documents, they simply need to click on "Add-Ons" and then click on TextHelp Study Skills --> Show Highlighting Tools.

I'd love to hear your ideas of how you see this tool being used effectively in your classroom!