Things are taking off

So this is a bit of word play to lead into a post about “piloting” a few technology initiatives in our board.

Whenever I write an email to the system, I always think no one will respond:) However it is amazing to see that many dedicated teachers will a) step up to earn something new, b) be willing to learn alongside their students, c) let me join them and get in on the action, d) give their time in tech clubs, and more. Here is a summary of what’s flying this spring.

Hackergals

We had one Grade 7-12 school go ahead last fall and thanks to them the momentum has spread to 5 schools. All the new schools are K-8, and students participating are from grade 6-8. They are attending Hackergal learning sessions on their recesses and getting ready for the national Hackathon on May 2. Last week, I ran into two teachers and a parent, all from different schools, all talking about how enthusiastic the girls are, and expressing gratitude for the opportunity.
App Inventor
Wow! This was all new for me. Back in December I reached out to one of our CS teachers for a suggestion for a Grade 8 student who wanted to build a very specific app idea for Science Fair. Flash forward four months: the student learned AI, Anne learned AI, we did some de-bugging together. Right before the student took Gold at the regional fair and earned a spot at Canada Wide. I absolutely love this platform and believe it fills a "missing link" between Scratch and high school CS courses. Challenging and engaging - a winning combination!

Coding and Computational Thinking and Pedagogical Documentation in K

We are part way through a series of seven workshops for our K teams of teachers and ECEs. I am so thrilled to be able to introduce these concepts, and to see how natural it is for educators to make the connections between BeeBot activities, unplugged coding, and the K program goals.

Minecraft Education Edition

We have had some hiccups with this one, mostly firewall related. I have been a facilitator at one school, and beyond the enthusiasm for participating, I have observed a significant improvement in what we would have simply called behaviour in the past. Now I can frame this in terms of global competencies. There is no doubt in my mind that the increasing levels of respect have been prompted by building cooperatively in Minecraft. There have been great examples of collaboration, communication, creativity and more. In four weeks our group has doubled in size by earning the right to attend, and participants have significantly reduced conflict by working together.

Makey Makey

Everyone loves Makey Makey and our pilot classes are no exception. For me the main excitement comes from the growing awareness, that has evolved naturally, of a makerspace mindset. This is new to our board and not yet broadly promoted. I was so excited to be in a class where students had gone home unprompted over a weekend and built a joystick, surprising their teacher with a request to test it on a Makey Makey. She hid her surprise well, and just told them to give it a try. They were rockstars to their peers when it worked perfectly, and were able to give me a great explanation of their structure.

Micro:Bits

The same two teachers who volunteered for Makey Makey and invited me into their classes are going to move forward with our new Micro:Bits later this spring.

Coding Quest Arcade

Not a pilot – but an expansion. We have few more schools on board this year and our big celebration is approaching fast. We also piloted Coding Trek with our primary classes this year, and the students were whizzes at learning Scratch Jr. (See previous post).

Time for Tech Leadership

In reading on Twitter and in the ACSE email discussion group, I am starting to see a pattern. Over the past five years I have seen this several times, a round of observations and comments on:

·      Not enough young women in technology,

·      Not enough computer science teachers in Ontario,

·      Most teachers’ colleges are no longer training CS teachers,

·      Teacher candidates are not choosing CS as a teachable.

Meanwhile (dates and numbers on employee shortages seem to vary a bit), by 2019 or 2020, there will be 180,000 or 200,000 technology jobs going unfilled in Canada due to a lack of qualified workers. Not to mention many times that south of the border.

In my job, I am in many different schools. So, my comments are really just based on our board. But I imagine they apply to other locations in Ontario.

·      In perhaps half of our schools, classes will participate in Hour of Code as a one-time event.

·      A handful of teachers are integrating coding by participating in The Learning Partnership’s Coding Trek and Coding Quest.

·      A number of schools and local community groups are involved with First Lego League, but fewer than half.

·      Most teachers are not confident in bringing coding into their programs.

·      In terms of pedagogical discussion, most teachers have not had any training in coding and/or computational thinking and/or curriculum integration.

·      Most would not be aware of existing Ministry or third-party resources.

I believe our small educational technology team (TELTs and DeLC) have been very pro-active, responding to requests and enthusiastically promoting opportunities as they arise.

However, it troubles me that in Ontario in 2018:

·      A student’s access to this learning is unstructured and completely related to the private/personal initiative of specific teachers (or schools or boards).

·      There is no continuum of study for students who wish to grow over the course of 12 years in our schools.

·      Third party providers are doing the vast majority of training, at the request or initiative of specific teachers, schools or boards (eg. Fair Choice, The Learning Partnership, First Lego, Logics Academy).

·      The ministry of education has some resources but they are not widely known.

Personally, I think it is time to see these skills embedded in a systemic way in our provincial education world.

Thinking about the LMS

Well, this will be a blast from the pastJ, but I am glad I was asked, as I agree it is still an issue worth thinking about.

Background

At our small Grade 7-8 school, as a team we had arrived at a way of integrating tech that suited everyone. This all took place about 5-8 years ago. We had no devices, just a computer lab. In various combinations I taught IT and/or media literacy to most of the classes for 3-4 years (along with other subjects). Some years, I would consult with the core teachers and we would come up with projects that would fulfil a variety of curriculum needs. In other years, it was a course called History/Media, where I taught history and also was responsible for the media literacy strand.

I was happy because I had this amazing assignment, and the other teachers were happy too. They all had a great attitude towards technology but were not yet confident about learning apps and programs and teaching them to the kids. I did the introductory work with the students and then the teachers were comfortable carrying on with other uses in their own classes – often at the students’ request.

My History/Media class

It was virtually paperless. I used the Smartboard to do direct teaching, Senteo clickers for brief assessments and every month or 6 weeks a new app for a new project. It was not really what we would now call inquiry or project-based learning in the truest sense, but more like open questions presented by me. Apps we used included: Windows MovieMaker, Bitstrips, Prezi, Google Sketchup, Glogster, xtranormal, Twiducate, and more. We were also (as it is now termed) co-creating success criteria.

As time went by it became clear, from an assessment point of view, that the traditional pattern or class profile was being shaken up. Male students, some with well-known identifications, were taking the top marks. The whole array of marks was much more gender neutral. I knew from the boys’ literacy study I had done at our school that this was significant. Statistically, in a content course like History, this was not typical. My principal and I discussed this phenomenon.

Our CI question

Six years ago, when we wanted to get some iPads for the school, in our board you had to do a CI in order to get the funds.

To paraphrase – we asked “If we teach writing using technology will the achievements of male students and students with an identification reach the levels of the female students?”

For the CI itself we had quite a complicated and thorough series of assessment tasks, moderated marking, etc. But in June, my principal wanted to look again at the History/Media report card marks. I just about fell off my chair in dismay! All the stats and graphs showed the old profile with girls ahead by up to 20%! I felt like such an idiot – and I could not figure out why this had happened.

Then it dawned on me. For most of semester 2 I had introduced the students to the LMS, at the same time as we were doing the CI. Because of the complexity of the environment, we had stayed almost exclusively with the LMS and the Ministry content for Grades 7 and 8. The consistent weekly use reinforced patterns like: Content, then Assignment; how to submit a document to the Dropbox from the system drive; how to participate in a discussion. For me, I was getting better at using the News column and placing links to Content and Assignments there, and at previewing and selecting the best of the Interactive Learning Objects for use in class. Nevertheless, with that content, combined with my own inexperience in using an LMS, it became predominantly a read-write environment and assessment always seemed to come back to something where a segment of the students were not able to show their learning as effectively as they had in my former class setup. (Not that I was aware of it at the time!)

As a relatively new LMS user, and one new to using the Ministry content, my perception was that we were still in a dynamic, tech-based environment that was essentially no different from what I had previously been doing. Yes, of course I was doing blended learning. The computers were on, we were in an LMS, I was present and engaging with the students in the lab as usual.

But of course in hindsight I can see the error of my thinking! Kids were Using multimedia, not Making multimedia. In SAMR terms, we were predominantly in a Substitution mode. We had regressed to an electronic textbook and paper and pencil-style tasks, with some online activities mixed in.

It was a far cry from the give and take of classroom instruction and interaction, followed by multiple choice questions with a clicker to test factual or conceptual understanding, followed by two-thirds of every class involving creativity, personal choice in terms of direction and research, and some choice later in the year as to tools. I can now see of course that I could have gone further with all of these activities as well but, at the time, they really served my students better than an LMS-based course. And of course I now see how I could better use an LMS to make it more suitable for all learners. But I wonder how much of this thinking is going on with teachers? Or are they going to dismiss the LMS “as is”, or even worse, unwittingly set their students along a path that will not lead to optimal learning and understanding?

That one meeting with my principal forever changed my views about the power and limitations of various types of technology. And the importance of more thoughtful planning for new uses.