When are things actually private

 Some rights reserved by nitot

It's been interesting this year talking to students and other teachers about what is private, and how things are private. 

One of my teachers wants to share more of her work.  She is doing pretty interesting things and wants feedback and ways to share her knowledge.  She is however afraid that her ex will follow her, and she doesn't want anything to do with him.  She's worried about what it means to go public and if sharing is actually worth the stress of knowing he is still watching.  I totally get that, I mean, it's obvious (at times) to see who is watching and when, but if you go public it can be hard to stop specific people from accessing. My wondering is how important is it, I mean as long as there is no harassment, who really cares and if there is harassment we can block and go to the police, however, she feels much safer not publishing. 

One of my students email was "hacked" he was telling people about his personal account, and someone accessed it and sent some not nice email. I guess firstly I don't believe it was hacked, but if it was, that's an interesting story, we keep using the common sense media image where we protect our private information, but that is difficult for younger students. 

My wondering most of this week is, as we continue to be more connected we are less private, and I don't know if we are teaching how to actually be safe to students, or how to live safely in a very connected world. 

Shaping our class

 Some rights reserved by Matt Stratton

I was just talking to one of my colleagues about this lately.  How can we shape our classroom, and our classroom culture differently.  

I was mentioning Lakoff, and how metaphors help shape our reality.  Today reading Creating Cultures of Thinking I came across the same idea.  Often we refer to school as work, especially for students.  How does this shape how they go about their day? 

I remember Sir Ken Robinson talking about teachers as gardeners. 

How powerful can we be if we start changing our metaphors? How do we start this? 

When we think about vision of a school and the places we want to go, we don't often address how we shape our school through language.   When we think about brands and story telling and the whole image of school, we as teachers need to start shaping it through our daily interactions, the metaphors we create and the language we use. 

I'm not sure gardening is the best metaphor (although it fits nicely with my environmental beliefs) but the idea that growth is always possible and that there are seasons of better growth really resonates with me (actually now I wonder if this is something we have to differentiate as well). 

Unity and standards: What are we aiming for?

        Some rights reserved by Chris Devers

Thanks again to the Place Being Resonance book I've been stuck in a world of wondering.  I apologize in advance. I know at times I am not clear in my writing, and this thought isn't fully formed, so it might not make the most sense. 

While reading it talked about what our destruction of the world looks like, and it looks like progress, parts look like sustainable development, parts look like social justice.  It looks like we are supposed to be doing the things we are doing because that's how people develop.  In order for humans to be unified (economically, socially, etc.) other things have to (and do) suffer.  So, when we are looking at unity, we are often just taking an anthropocentric view of what we need (and people would argue why wouldn't we think of humans first) and we forget about what our system (The Earth) needs. While we are going for unity, I'm not really sure we know who we are unifying with, and who (or what I suppose) we are excluding. 

It's really difficult for anyone to step back from themselves, deconstruct what they think, challenge the dominant culture and make a difference.  Where do those ideas even come from? So how can we expect people to actually protect our planet when we don't even know what we don't know. 

While I was pondering this, I started thinking about school, and how we are trying to hit standards and go through curriculums, and just race through to show progress.  My mind kind of paused for a second, what and who are we progressing and for what end?  Place Being and Resonance wants us to challenge how we teach, why are we moving towards more data? What is growth? Who benefits from our current system of education, and who suffers? I think deep down we know the answers to these questions, but it is difficult to challenge a system that wants to engage and enlighten our learners.  When we have public school systems that want to bring up literacy are we focusing too much on a specific type of reading? So much was flying through my head. 

I'm not really sure where to take it from there.  I know I have to listen more (not just to humans, but I need to be aware of the voices not being heard or acknowledged).  I know I have to slow things down and encourage actual thinking, and actual listening in my students.  I know I have to encourage students to be aware of a multi-vocal, eco-centric (as in not just anthropocentric) view of our planet. 

I guess the real question is how can we see the system we are in and try to fight for that system, while being aware of the multi-faceted aspects of our world.  How we can honestly unify through diversity? 

Joyful Places

 Some rights reserved by GlobalPartnership for Education

I've been thinking a lot about places and how to get people connected to places.  Recently I was asked if Singapore was a "joyful place", it really got me thinking. 

What is a joyful place, how do places become joyful, can we make this happen?  I've explored this a bit in my thesis, but it's something I often revisit.  I didn't know how to explain this.  The first thought was no, it's not joyful, but I do find joy.  Mostly because of how I interact with my place.  I'm outside a couple nights a week playing some sort of sport.  We go to the gardens and by the water.  We take the dogs for a walk twice a day.  I find joy in all those moments.  

But when I'm walking around I see many unhappy people, working late, angry in their cars, overheated and I think it's not the space that's joyful. 

It's how you live in a place.  We can only fully become comfortable in our place if we spend time in it, and once we spend that time we can start working on the relationships, and then the positive relationship in our place. 

I do think it would greatly increase work place satisfaction if we spent more time outside and interacting with our community. 

Collaborating

 Some rights reserved by familymwr

Since the holiday things have been full on, exciting, but busy.  We want to move more towards a fish bowl model of professional development at our school. We've put in our proposal and are waiting for our chance to talk with administration. 

Right after though, I applied for a job as an Open Minds Coordinator.  During the interview I was able to talk more about the fish bowl concept and what I wanted to do with it, as I was talking this whole new idea unfolded, who do I actually collaborate with, and how do I collaborate with them.  Often I feel I just talk to my fellow Digital Literacy Coaches, sometimes teachers, sometimes STEAM, but not as many people as I should.  

The goal now is to take over the library, with the Digital Literacy Coaches (I don't think Open Minds is for me), bring in the Librarians, the STEAM people, the Open Minds people and other Learning Leaders at school.  Then do all of our PD.  We have people who are experts in areas constantly offering PD, sharing expertise with the other experts so we can all present, and then people book out specific coaches for individual needs based on individual goals. 

I'm very excited.

Presentation

So, here's my enviroed story.  It's a story more than a presentation, walking through why I am an environmental educator, and some of the worries I have, it moves to the hope that we collaborate together in a 21st century learning community.

My primary worry is that we are becoming too individual, and as individuals it is harder to make large scale changes.  I love the idea of personalized learning, but worry about how that effects our ability to work as a community and make decisions as a community.  My desire is to  move towards community based learning and problem solving while focusing on individual talents and ideas.

For me though, the formation of this community is key, and a big part of my community is the #enviroed team. So thanks for that.  +Nicki Hambleton has also been a huge part of my community development, and a big reason for my belief in the community based education with individual talents.

Developing relationships

 Some rights reserved by swambo

Just something to think about today, I think this will be the start of my presentation in a couple of weeks.  I'm discussing how to use technology in, and for the environment in elementary school.  I think it's all about relationships, what do you think?

Hybrid Minds

 Some rights reserved by Sam Judson

This week, well the last couple of weeks, have been looking at Richard Louv's idea of Hybrid Minds. Technology is something we have always been working on, and I imagine always will, the natural world, the world we are connected to (without wireless) is always here, and hopefully always will be.  How can we pay attention to both? How can we develop both sustainably? Where do we go from here?

Lots of questions as I started reading these past couple of weeks, and while nothing has been explicitly answered, I feel my original thoughts are being reaffirmed. 

My project with getting the students outside and documenting their spots has taken a smallish turn.  Although they haven't been publishing their thoughts or feelings so much, they have displayed a different attitude towards being outdoors. 

Earlier in the year it was difficult to get them to put the ipads down, they wanted to keep holding on to them, checking out youtube videos, now they want to relax outside.  They've been putting the ipads down, and just laying down, looking at their spots and just being in nature. 

We have to find some way to mix the two of these realities though, and as I continue reading and working with our students, this is the goal.

Thinking about it

 Some rights reserved by SomeDriftwood

For +COETAIL I am well into the process of collecting evidence and working with students to share spaces.  I'm not sure how successful it will be but the process is enlightening for sure.

With students these past two weeks (the ones who aren't working on my Coetail project) we are exploring digital citizenship, with the idea that it can shape the future of who we are. 

Spencer Harrison and I used to work together, at the time I wasn't as aware of the idea of personal brand.  I was very conscious of displaying the image I wanted to show with the intention of challenge other people's viewpoints. Spencer was one of the first people to tell me, my image or brand could be shaped without shaping me. 

What this means for digital citizenship is that we aren't always who we appear to be online.  We all need to understand that a google search or looking at someone's facebook, linkedin profile or whatever is not who that person really is.  We can create our identity. 

Since we are creating our identity, we should make sure it's the best version of ourselves, and then try to live up to it. Our digital citizenship classes go into who do we want to be (as in what kind of person) and then how do we take action to be recognised as that type of person, what do they do. 

The last two weeks have been pretty interesting to see what versions of themselves each students wants to present.  They are thinking about their future, about who they want to be online, and how they can achieve this reality. 

How disruptive is silence?

 Some rights reserved by jsdilag

Just returned from a course on Cognitive Coaching with Bill and Ochan Powell where we talked about the power of listening, and being uncomfortable can be to our learning.

One of the things I started last year (and Bill and Ochan mentioned at the workshop) was the idea that as teachers, we don't really teach listening.  Well maybe some teachers do, but things like looking at a person, focusing, and keeping eye contact doesn't really mean listening to me.  I think listening means being able to summarize the thoughts of another, and make connections (without the purpose of summarizing or making connections).  I don't know, I find it hard to fully describe (probably because I was never really taught).  Listening can be powerful, in this course we spent a lot of time listening, to each other, our instructors and ourselves, and honestly, I learned a lot. Mostly because I was quiet. This was incredibly difficult for me, I'm almost always trying to make connections to what people are thinking, and stopping myself from talking was something I had to learn. 

The point is, I think anyway, that making myself uncomfortable, really improved my learning.  Putting myself in a new situation, really trying to figure out someone else's point of view, helped me learn more about them and myself. 

Since my main wondering are with technology and the environment,  I wonder how we can incorporate silence into our learning with technology.  So often we use our tech to distract us from the silence and those uncomfortable moments.  This, I feel, takes us away from those deeper learning opportunities. 

As teachers who use technology how do we initiate and establish those silence moments with a device, first in ourselves and then in our students? How can we make listening (active listening, or reading) a habit online rather than just consuming? 

Listening to collaborate

 Some rights reserved by rick

We've started our project about connecting students, seems okay so far, but we noticed something, we rarely listen.  Before we went online, we started sharing our migration stories, what that meant to us, but no one really listened to the other stories.

One of the worries teachers have about incorporating technology (and one of mine as well) is how much it speeds things up.  We need to slow down in elementary, and really think about why and how we interact with each other.  

It got our whole class thinking about what does it mean to listen.  We threw words around like "focus", "pay attention", "look at the person", and other kinds of things.  We couldn't really define what those things looked like though.  After some discussions and some personal blogging about listening some of the students had some great ideas.  One student though about using only one or two tabs, that would keep her focused on the task at hand.  One other student talked about the importance of finishing her work, and waiting until we finished.  

We transferred these ideas over to "real" life.  By keeping only one tab open, we're only thinking about one thing (the conversation).  By finishing your work before moving on, we're going to wait until the person is finished before we think about responding.  Some abstract ideas for sure, but we're focusing on listening first. 

I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks. For research we're learning to skim and scan, there are more opportunities to look at how to finish more books rather than re-read or read deeply. So much of what we're doing is encouraging students to speed up, then we get frustrated when they don't stop and listen to us.  I really think we need to slow down.  

 Some rights reserved by Thomas Hawk

Modelling this is going to be important for sure.  How do we listen to our students, what does it mean to be a teacher, especially in a connectivist world?  Lots of wonderings this week as we move forward. 

 Some rights reserved by dkuropatwa

First week of "magic spots"

Student photo

This was our first week of magic spots.  I am only doing this with two students so far.  We are working on a year long project to make a stop motion video (as well as address feelings regarding) a specific spot in school.  The point of this project is to connect students to a place in nature.

When we first went out I was excited to get the project underway. We have a rather large field, and I said to the students you can pick anyplace you would like to be for your spot.  Both students stayed relatively close to the school, and only one picked a view of a tree (the other picked a view of a slide).  I had explained what I thought was important about the project, but both students had said they had already picked their spots (before we went out together). So while it was great they had been thinking about a space meaningful to them, I was a little concerned about where the space they chose. 

After the first day we did a short debrief regarding their feelings.  Both students just felt hot, and not real attachment, which was to be expected.  I found some grass that was seeding and got them to look deeper into their space.  This seemed to be effective.  After recess one of the students came up to me and noticed more grass that looked strange. 

So far, the project has been going as planned I guess.  The students seem interested, but it's only the first week.  It might be a challenge to keep this enthusiasm happening all year. 

When I was a classroom teacher it was easy to make sure every student got outside and was quiet for at least five minutes a day, it seems so much more difficult without a class. 

They are all very excited about making the video though.  

Connecting students with nature

 Some rights reserved by USDAgov

Starting next week I am going to be working on my "magic spot" project with students.  I have been doing this without technology for a couple of years but I want to incorporate technology more meaningfully into the students work. 

So, starting next week I will be taking a couple of grade three students and some iPads outside.  They will take a photograph of their spot.  With hope we will get outside every school day and take a photo.  We will then put these photos together into a stop motion video. 

I hope to create deeper connections between people and places. Often at international schools I feel that students and teachers do not feel connected to their place.  When people feel more connected they will be more likely to take action for their space (check out my thesis if you're really more interested in this). 

Would love some ideas if anyone has them. 

Thinking about coaching

 Some rights reserved by jenhegna1

I've been thinking a lot about coaching (what it means to be an Edtech coach, a learning coach, a sports coach, are they different?) this week.  Mostly in relating to professional development for teachers.  I think a lot of us know where we want to be, or what we want to do, we just need someone there to help us get there, and make sure we're doing it while following our school's vision. 

One of the best things about life is change, and my job is constantly evolving.  In order to keep up with this, I need heaps of PD, and I'm reading as much as I can.  Currently I'm reading this book. 

amazon.com

I'm trying not to think of myself as "just" an Edtech Coach, but as a learning coach. While I don't have the whole skill set yet, it's something I'm working on. 

One of the most important concepts that this book made me reflect on, and I use in my EdTech job is the importance of trust.  Moving to a new school means the first thing I have to do is build those relationships with teachers.  I'm going to a lot of meetings, listening and supporting, and finding out what they think should be happening.  By listening and then acting, I'm hoping that the teachers will know that I have their backs when they want to try something, so that when I want to encourage them to go somewhere new in their learning journey, they'll know I support them. 

 Some rights reserved by torbakhopper

I think it all goes back to the sense of community and connection.  If we all feel like we are connected, and we are trying to do the best for learning (students' and ours) then we need to be open to some direction.  Any kind of peer coaching can be helpful.  

Getting into classes this week was amazing. So good to see happy kids, and inspired teachers doing their best. We're starting individual student blogs in the next couple of weeks, working on class blogs and storytelling apps this week. All in all an exciting time to be working with teachers.