#YYCLC Day 60: Kidblog and Grade 6 Math

Students at Keeler School being introduced to Kidblog as a way to demonstrate understanding of math concepts.

#YYCLC Day30: Duct Tape Art

Students at Keeler School being makers with duct tape.

Learning Commons Transformation by Crisis

Hanging on the Willow Park fence after the fire. 

An update from Willow Park School after our recent fire. Chelsea Mason, our dance teacher calls it “Teacher Survival School” and makes sound effects when she reenacts the stories about her teaching day. I personally experience thoughts that veer wildly from “I can do anything! Bring it on world!” to fits of hysterical laughter.

I was surfing through blog posts from fellow learning commons colleagues and I realized I had to stop working and share our story. The people really need to know! Let me recap the situation for you.

This August I began a brand new job at Willow Park Arts-Centered Middle School as the Learning Commons instructor. One of my main roles would be spearheading the Library to Learning Commons transition. A dream come true.  

Step one included:

• Facilitate Learning Commons Design Strategy Workshops with teachers and students throughout the school.
• Give information sessions with parents about digital citizenship, digital learning platforms (specifically D2L) and the learning commons transition.
• Organize teacher coffee and carb sessions where focus on an area of needed professional learning for a half an hour before school on fridays.  
• Learn how to use the server based space and equipment booking system.
• Connect users to content quicker by moving the laptops into wings of the school, rather than signing them out individually from the circulation desk.
• Collect and create book lists.
• Compile and share a learning commons companion guide filled with 21st Century literacy strategies to support and strengthen conversation between units and disciplines.
• Analyze staff and students feedback about growing our services through apps, digital files and ebooks.
• Work with key stakeholders to evaluate and map digital platforms and channels into virtual learning spaces and pathways.

Step one was a phenomenal success. Truly. The learning commons transition and digital citizenship workshops sparked lively discussion. Everyone was brainstorming ways to re-paint, de-carpet, re-arrange our space into areas that suited their needs better. Students were challenging the idea and making lists of things that they wanted to see stay the same, as well as things they would like to change. Students and teachers began building digital learning spaces on both public and private spaces embedding the D2L experience with award winning web 2.0 tools seamlessly. Parents, administrators and teachers starting using google tools for collaboration tools. We were having equal access discussions, inquiries about e-textbooks, giving password support, identifying strategies for weeding, troubleshooting technology, logging software and hardware needs and brainstorming collection development with teachers. We were in total wind-up and/or full swing. The Virtual Learning Commons was also growing. David Cloutier my student-teacher and I were mapping and strategizing tools and steps. Teachers and students were generating and designing. I started adding and following teachers who had public websites, students were next. By the end of September every teacher in the school had at minimum one digital learning platform. Most had integrated learning platforms together, becoming architects in learning design through the process of trying and risk taking. More than half of the students in the school had begun building digital learning spaces.

When all of a sudden we were in a terrible mess.

The Classroom...

At 4 am October 9th 2013 vandals set fire to the school destroying a classroom on northeast side of the building and structurally damaging the entire northeast  wing of the school. On October 10th we found out who did and didn’t have what they needed, and when/who would be able to get back into the school to tag and request items needed to start teaching as soon as possible. This day also marks the beginning of the technical difficulties with Weebly, D2L, Wordpress and the integration of the three. Needless to say, that while we did get some online support and do some troubleshooting this issue took a back seat to the new issues both urgent and important.

By October 17th 2013 the entire 650+ student population and all staff moved to Viscount Bennett School. We’ve been fortunate to have Thanksgiving and an Org day fall into this month.  October 28th will mark our 6th day in session at the Viscount Campus.

For our second step forward things are looking a lot different.  

Step two has so far included:

• Creating group google documents shared through the staff D2L shell to compile the lists of resources we need to get started, empowerment arts-centered resilience ideas.
• Posting .pdfs of all the textbooks for every grade in a school wide D2L shell for student availability until our physical textbooks are returned.  
• Setting up a temporary laptop computer lab with borrowed laptops and replacing it with our computers as they arrive bit by bit.
• Getting permission to borrow a desk and a processing space for our clerk in the Viscount Learning Commons.
• Painting the walls and hanging posters over the graffiti on the walls.
• Unpacking boxes and boxes of technology after they are cleaned and getting as much technology into the hands of students and teachers as possible as fast as possible.
• Identifying what works, what is broken, what is missing, what is a write-off and what software and hardware support teachers feel are essential to this moment.
• Tracking down teacher laptops, access to SIRS and access to printing  as top priorities.
• Identifying active wifi ports and dead spaces in our borrowed space.
• Getting free public library coupon cards for all 650 students.
• Starting a paperback “take it or leave it” library.
• Empowering my clerk to buy two copies of every book she can find a ULS and Scholastic that are on a teacher booklist.
• Teaching drama… lots of drama… it’s my subject and when you have a class full of kids in the computer lab, no wifi, no other spaces and the computers all go off-line… you go out to the field to teach drama.
• Getting a new schedule with more teaching and more supervision.
• Starting and sitting on a “healing through the arts” collaborative learning project committee.
• Building a brand new equipment booking site with constantly growing equipment
• Redeploying laptop carts in every area.
• Finding power supplies and power cords for all technology… for some reason the cables were all cleaned separately and misplaced.
• Connect via google forms to the parent volunteer coordinators to make sure to thank the many volunteers and supporters who helped with this transition.

Team Members David Cloutier and Graham Killen Setting Up Temporary Lab

Students, teachers and parents have asked the question; what are we going to do so that we continue what we’ve started with our Learning Commons transition now that physical space is more of a computer lab and less of a common space? We’re now experiencing delays and side steps in many of our plans. Even though, things have changed. Fast.

Teachers that were just becoming dependent on their integrated technology were stalled out and many asked to teach with no technology for a time, in some cases asked to teach without a whiteboard never mind without a SMART Board. We were discouraged but not defeated. The learning changed. In one case students offered to do their school work at home and to spend the day organizing cords and setting up computers. Classroom-flipped. Community centered.

It appears that we are going to focus on building resiliency in our learning community and building a virtual learning commons for our community. Our frame and our focus shifted from inside out to outside in. It’s some ways it’s a blessing in disguise. The school will have all books packed in boxes making the ripping out of the carpet that we planned to do anyways easier to achieve.

So what is a virtual learning commons? According to Shahuai Ren and Jialin Cao of the Shanghai University Library the definition is a complicated sequence of formulas that looks like this:

Definition: Virtual Learning Commons VLC: = {U, {Pt, Vc, Sm, Ot, Vr}, {Dl, El, Sn, It}, Up, Vo}, in which U:={St, Te, Li}, U is user, the generalized concept which included all the participants in learning activities. St: Students or Learner; Te: teachers, counselors, peer counselors; Li: Librarians, IT support staff, and other staff. In the VLC, students are the learning subjects, while teachers, counselors, librarians, IT support staff and other support staff are supporters of the learning activities and also learning partners of students for improving learning effect through exchange and interaction. [Pt, Vc, Ot, Sm, Vr} are the five functional layers. Pt: Portal, Vc: Virtual community, Ot: online collaboration and learning tools, Sm: Semantic construction, Vr: virtual resources (Cao & Ren, 2011)

The VLC organization system described above can be simplified if we think of it just in terms of meeting the learners learning, interaction, collaboration and research needs by integrating digital libraries, e-learning systems, social networks and support tools. Despite our evolving context the key question is still; “How can we adapt our learning services and create spaces to serve the 21st Century student? Questions about how this crisis will affect our this direction? What are different learning needs associated with this evacuation? What virtual connections will the community find most useful in organizing and collecting resources? How are students, parents, teachers, administrators and experts using interactive digital platforms to connect common learning? How do students perceive both the opportunities and challenges with being digital learners? Is there a link between the use of different interactive platforms and user generated content levels to the students’ perceived success in academic achievement?  How can best I support our evolving context and simultaneously map an integrated school web presence that has findable content and collaboration gateways?  

Stay tuned for ideas around how we answer these questions and reflections on different VLC implementation techniques.  Step one: find the plugins for the projectors.  

Cao, J., & Ren, S. (2011). The virtual learning commons architecture based on semantic technologies. In X. Luo, Y. Cao, B. Yang, J. Liu & F. Ye (Eds.), New horizons in web-based learning - ICWL 2010 workshops (Vol. 6537, pp. 151-160). Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-20539-2_17

Clark, S. (2013, October 12). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://a3lc.blogspot.ca/2013/10/encouraging-curiosity.html

Martin, C. (2013, April 21). [Web log message]. Retrieved from http://readersbookbin.org/?p=774

Morville, P. (2011, AUGUST 08). Information architect.Semantic Studios, Retrieved from http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000647.php

Vaughan, N., Zimmer, J., & Villamar, F. (2012). Student engagement and interactive technologies:what's the connection?. Research project, Department of education and schooling, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada. Retrieved from http://www2.mtroyal.ca/~nvaughan/norm/studentfall2012.pdf

Focusing Instruction on What Counts

Flipping the Commons

Focusing Instruction on What Counts

If it's rote, base-level thinking, don't evaluate them on it - give it to them... Focus assessment on the bigger stuff that actually matters!

When we make rubrics there often seems to be something about the "looks" of the final product... And the looks may have to do with rudimentary tech skills. Actually, not even tech skills: specific-program skills. All too often kids can get a great mark on something because their presentation or their tech-created product looks pretty - never mind the content. Teachers of course strive to balance the field, and I think I've found a good way to tackle a bit of this...

I'm in the process of creating tutorials that step students through this rudimentary tech stuff (that we shouldn't really assess kids on). They are 2-minute clips that show students how to click, where to click, and what to click to make the programs do what they want. By throwing them up on the Keeler Commons Virtual Space students are able to watch these videos when they want, where they want, and as many times as they want. This frees students up to focus their time on the content, their ideas, and their thinking rather than the how-to of technology.

The true benefit of this is that it puts me in different places at the same time. During a recent class my voice could be heard from 5 computers in the commons, helping kids with the "click here, then here" type stuff, so I could spend my time asking probing questions and focusing on the good work. It also helped set up a culture of support within the student community... a student asks another student, then checks tutorials, then asks me for help. All this while I am conferencing with groups and helping them assess the content and quality of their work and the expression of their ideas.

Giving 24-7 tutorials builds independence in students and anytime we build independence we build student success.

Keeler School Virtual Space

Our Virtual Learning Space
Keelercommons.weebly.com 

"The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting." - Steve Jobs

I believe that the statement above is in support of the Learning Commons Virtual Space we are aiming for at Keeler School: A site that students contribute to and choose to use from any device, at any time, simply because they can't stop thinking about their schoolwork!

We've been working extremely hard on the philosophy in the school and on the physical space in the Learning Commons itself. Now, though, the focus has shifted to anywhere, anytime learning.
We chose Weebly as a site-creation tool because it looks great on all devices. It is also extremely easy to embed collaborative documents, forms, spreadsheets (from Google Docs), and PDFs (scribd.com). It is important that google forms can be embedded in there, as we are a google trial school and we're finding the feedback to be invaluable. Here is what we have included so far.

Tutorials.

I've found that I'm teaching the same "click here, now here, now here" to help students with simple or complex tasks on their computer... So the next logical step was to create short, snappy tutorials to help students out!The newest section on our virtual space is tutorials.

Students and teachers can hover their mouse over Tutorials and select the program they are using. By clicking the video that is connected to what they need they are stepped through whatever they are struggling with. I'm trying to keep the clips under 2:30, so they can be watched and absorbed quickly. I've found this to be helpful as students can watch a tutorial as frequently or infrequently as they need - meaning that it levels the playing field a bit. And if students are working at home, they can see them there as well, 24-7.

I've tested this out during a few classes at this point, and found it hugely successful - despite how strange it was to hear my voice coming from different corners in the Learning Commons!

Projects.
This section is dedicated to projects that are taking place in the LC. Students are able to click on their current unit of study to find links to resources or online work they are doing (for example, the grade 4s are working on their first Wiki). This section will hopefully grow to include teacher write-ups about the projects, student samples, rubrics and links. We'll see... It's still young!

Forms.
By embedding google forms, all students can feel like they have a say about what is not only on the site (as in links, pictures, etc.), but they will also feel that they have a say about what books are in the Learning Commons. I'm just getting this going, so I'm offering a prize to students who provide the best resources in the 4th and 5th grades... Hopefully in the future I won't need to do this...

Teachers have also been using embedded google forms. And it has been an astounding way to communicate with our technician who we only host for 3 hours a week. In this section, teachers are able to report any technical problems with their SMART Boards, student computers, teacher computers, or printers. So far, it seems like a promising way to remove the middle man (me) from wasting time attempting to solve problems that are time consuming and complex!

Class Web Pages. We signed up to use the project server from the Calgary Board of Education and made it available for teachers to create class web pages on iWeb. Student work is being posted up in a variety of ways - sometimes it is pictures of students working in the classroom, problem solving a task. Other times, teachers are using the blog feature to showcase student writing. This has created a sense of pride in the students, and we have found the visits to our sites steadily increasing.





Links.
We've included links to everything from the Khan Academy to Glogster. We're looking for students to take initiative and either check up on concepts they don't fully understand, or to try a new web 2.0 tool. It's my belief that we should not shelter students from these tools, but instead teach them how to use them in a responsible way. When we asked our students in grade 6 last year who was on Twitter about half of them raised their hands. When asked if they upload to Youtube, about a third of them admitted to having a channel. They are going to do it anyway, we need to teach them how to be smart, not turn a blind eye!

We have links as well to the e-library (CBE's online catalogue). In the future, I'd like to post tutorials on how to use a catalogue and how to find books through the Dewey Decimal Stystem. 

Admiral Use Policy. 
We have also included a page dedicated to our Admirable Use Policy at Keeler School. This was developed at the start of the year, and we're hoping to get students using it and thinking about how to properly behave online. Again, I was thinking about having students create videos describing digital citizenship... I just need to overcome the paperwork and see if we can put them online!

Feedback.
I'd love feedback... If you're reading this you are most likely connected to education in some way or other. What would you add? What should be taken out/simplified? Do you have any suggestions for other great Web 2.0 tools to help students to represent their learning?

Thanks,
Mike MacKenzie