Dedicated to relinquishing responsibility for learning to the students
The 3rd edcampPDX is being held Feb 4, 2012 at Catlin Gabel School in Portland Oregon. This Storify serves as a permanent archive of the event’s social media backchannel. I’m following the hashtag #edcampPDX.
An edcamp is a unconference-style day of professional development organized and given by the local participants. It’s free, democratic, participant-driven professional development. Great teachers, interesting conversations and an excellent chance to network.
Update 2013: The free pilot has concluded – but click here for info on my $275 webinar.
One of this year’s resolutions was to begin offering webinars. (not that I don’t enjoy airports) I recently completed my first pilot (description below) and I’m looking for three school sites who would like to try a free pilot webinar and offer me some feedback. More details on my free webinar below.
I piloted my first webinar with a group of instructors from Southwest Wisconsin Technical College. (Hat tip to SWTC’s Kristal Davenport) We used Microsoft Live Meeting as a platform. Participants at SWTC were gathered in one room. We maintained webcam contact with each other throughout the workshop. (I’m not a big fan of watching webinar presentations delivered by a disembodied voice.) I pre-loaded high-quality video in advance that ran smoothly during the webinar. The webinar went very well and I think we were able to create the level of interaction that I strive for in my on-site workshops.
For years I’ve used a TurningPoint audience response system (ARS) in my on-site keynotes and workshops. When an ARS is used in a Socratic manner it fosters great conversation and reflection. So a key component I wanted in a webinar was a “distance version” of an ARS. I was pleased to discover Learning Catalytics. While it was designed for on-site classroom use, it was just what I needed to enliven the webinar.
Learning Catalytics is a web-based response system that allows participants to answer from any web-enabled device – computer, tablet, smart phone. It was easy to input questions (it even provides for copy / paste of text) and using it during the webinar was a breeze. It allows the teacher to ask a wide variety of questions. Not only the usual questions such as multiple-choice, priority, and ranking. But also some unique questions for an ARS where students use their devices to – draw vectors indicating directions, indicate the points on an image, and even aggregate student text into Word clouds. Imagine your students generating real-time Wordles from their devices!
Learning Catalytics was designed from the ground up to foster student discussion. It most notable feature is peer-learning tool (which unfortunately, I did not use – my pilot group was too small). In advance of class, the teacher inputs a seating chart of the the class. Students log into their seat locations. After posing a question, the teacher can use Learning Catalytic to automatically create student discussion groups that direct students to talk to specific peers based on their response to the question. “Peter turn to Nancy on your left and discuss the thinking behind your answer.” After the peer discussion, the teacher can repost the original question and graph the changing responses.
I like to continue piloting this model so I will offer a free live webinar to the first three schools (or sites) that follow through with my registration process.
I think professional development should model what we want to see in the classroom. So I’d like to start with an 45-minute experiential webinar called: “Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) - What’s that look like in the classroom?”
We’ll watch a few short video clips, do a few activities to model instruction at different levels of Blooms and then reflect on the experience. Our instructional goals for the webinar:
A few stipulations:
If you are willing to meet these stipulations in an efficient manner, fill in the request below. Remember – this is just a request. I will select from requests that demonstrate you’ll be easy to work with.
After the pilots are completed and my webinar model is refined, I plan to offer a series of (paid) webinars. I think there’s a need for short, inexpensive, engaging webinar-based PD that can foster reflection and professional growth. Something you can use with admin, faculty, department or grade level to foster local capacity.
This Wordle Word Cloud features the 100 most frequently used words from the full text of U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address (reported in Wall Street Journal).
Full text
Look carefully and you’ll see “education.”
If you want to analyze word use in all the State of the Union addresses, there’s a great tool at State of the Union. Image below is from JFK’s 1961 SOTU. (This a static screen shot go to site for a functional word map.) More instructions below.
Here’s some of the features of this site:
To move between State of the Union addresses, click or drag on the graph below the word cloud; the president who delivered each address and the date of delivery will appear at the bottom of the screen and in the center. The current date will appear in white and the previous one in red.
You can also use the right and left arrow keys to move one year at a time.
The words from the previous address viewed will appear in red when your mouse is over the cloud window so you can compare them. Mouse out to make them fade into the background.
Click on a word to view the full State of the Union address in the window to the right; the selected word will be highlighted.
Click below the graph or on a blank area of the word cloud to view the Wikipedia U.S. History Timeline describing events that happened in and around the year of the address.
edcampPDX is back! Calling all teachers, instructional technologists, IT Directors, Principals, Admins and Teacher Librarians who live in the Pacific NW. Join us at Catlin Gabel School on Saturday, February 4 from 9:00 am – 4:00 pm for our third edcampPDX.
What is edcampPDX?
What are the goals of edcampPDX?
What does it cost?
The day is FREE!!! (unless you want to pre-order a $5.00 lunch)
Check these Twitter archives from edcampPDX I and edcampPDX II
I recently featured a guest post from High Tech High’s David Stahnke and Margaret Noble that detailed their award-winning student multimedia exhibit “Illuminated Mathematics.”
Margaret is back with another student project, partner and guest post.
Text by Rachel Nichols and Margaret Noble.
Our Essential (Guiding) Questions
San Diego’s military bases drastically outnumber the facilities meant to help veterans with post war trauma. ~ Tobi Brik
Summary
We devised an experiential project, “Complex City” in order to help students think critically about their communities. In asking them to map an area of San Diego that had significance to them, we wanted them to step back from the familiar aspects of their community and city, and translate those aspects into a visual map. As part of this project, students researched, interviewed, and investigated their city and community in myriad ways. What they once thought was familiar suddenly became very unknown. By compiling their work and making collective and idiosyncratic maps of San Diego, they have been challenged to rethink what they understood to be the reality of the built environment around them, as well as to accept the new knowledges that their classmates contribute. They have become more invested in their own community because their new knowledge implicates them as involved citizens. These maps collect particular versions of this place (versions not always visible to others, or in traditional maps) as we see it in the fall/winter of 2011.
Student Assignment
From pursuing this question my love for marine life grew and my desire to help raise awareness for San Diego’s waters grew … I have a responsibility to get reckless boaters to be more cautious. ~ Jasmine Thomas
In this project, you will be making an animated map of San Diego based on your wanderings, interviews, research, and experiences. In short, you will be creating a map of San Diego that collects particular versions of this place (versions not always visible to others, or in traditional maps). Using Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City as one model, and our own creative explorations as another, we will be collecting data in the form of sounds, photos, historical information, interviews, and ephemera, and we will be compiling this data to make a series of complementary, contradictory, confounding or even contestatory maps of San Diego. We will be looking at Infinite City in detail, as well as working with archivists, historians, and community members to think creatively about mapping.
Bench Marks
Research Paper Outline, Story Board of Map – Oral Presentations
Rough Research Draft Paper, Map Draft 2, Final Research Paper
Map Animation Draft 1 with Critiques, Map Animation Revised with Critiques, Final Animation
Public Exhibition – Projection Art and Research Presentations
Three Essential Components:
1. Research Audio: 2-3 interviews relating to the theme/topic of your map. Each of these interviews will take the final form of a 2-3 minute piece, edited down from a 45-minute interview. Also record ambient noise and sonic data from your theme/topic. See example at The Soundlines Project.
2. Textual: a. One 6-8 page final paper per group (double-spaced; between 1500-2000 words). This draft should be divided into sections that include historical information, relevant current facts and anecdotes, and a critical analysis of the map and its meaning. The draft should be clearly marked as to which member of the group authored which sections. We will critique and workshop these papers.
b. Type a transcript from each of your interviews to turn in with final paper (due November 18th)
3. Visual: design, cartography and photography relevant to your project inquiry.
Project resources courtesy of Rachel Nichols and Margaret Noble
Images and videos supplied by Margaret Noble
