#YYCLC Day 142: White board tables to collaborate

These students are making use of one of our "whiteboard" tables to plan out a project. Since we opened the Learning Commons we are noticing more collaboration between students in all grade levels.

#YYCLC Day 120: #WikiSeat Painting

These girls wanted to come in at lunch time to work together on finishing/painting their #Wikiseat. They're not even in the same class.

#YYCLC Day 97: Collaboration in Action

Students from grades 3, 4, 5, & 6 working together on a variety of projects during morning recess.

#YYCLC Day 59: Wall Pops Dry Erase Spots

One of classroom teachers discovered these little gems. We are trying them out as a why for students to collaborate when when in the Learning Commons.

#YYCLC Day 55: Wikiseat Project

Recently I was given a catalyst by #canADE colleague and friend Jared Nichol from Cold Lake High School in Northern Alberta. I'm trying to create interest in this project by having students interact with the this metal object. What do you think it is?

White Board Dots

These look awesome! We are going to  buy some of these and create writeable workspaces on our learning commons tables.

They can be found here:
Ghost Dry Erase Dots - Dry Erase Decals http://buff.ly/1tLBft9

Willow Park L2LC Photo Journey

L2LC Photo Journey, a set on Flickr.

On October 7 we finished our school wide design thinking project about changing the Willow Park L2LC and possibilities. Shortly after that we were evacuated from the school due to the fire. On the return on February 24th our carpet had been removed and our parent volunteer group weeded our non fiction collection. Then we moved it to a new location in the room,  changed the location of the school server to create another student work space and removed the circulation desk to make more space. This is what the space looks like on March 6. We still have a long way to go - we hope to have more whiteboards and more resources for gaming, filming and different space for preforming. We need art - do we ever need art :) but we'll get there!

The New Hub - Virtual Learning Commons

This is the second time I have been lucky enough to design a virtual learning commons (VLC).

The VLC at Chris Akkerman will become the go to place for everything digital in our school. It will be the launching pad for projects, websites, web2.0 tools, tutorials and much more.

http://akkermanlc.weebly.com/

The following ideas are my thinking behind each of the sections/pages:

About Us

This page links people to see what is happening at our school and also to get in touch with us. Anyone can leave comments or email us.

Links

There are two links pages. One has Web 2.0 tools that we are using at our school and the other common websites that our students use. I separated them to help our students see the difference between regular websites and those that are web2.0 tools.  

Projects

I predict this will be the most used part of the site. Each grade will have access to their page that that can edit themselves (when given the permissions) . Each project page will link directly to work that is being done in an inquiry project in the classroom. This will help organizing digital files and allowing students to gain quick access to their work, success criteria and other digital resources. 

Tutorials

This page will have videos that and documents that have been made to help both teachers and students learn new ways of doing things using the technology in our school.  This will hopefully free up time for the teacher and student by providing extra support away from classroom and time. 

Staff

These two pages will be something that we will hopefully experiment with too. The Professional Learning page will serve as a place to list resources and documents that we create and share at PL days. The Staff Meeting page will serve as a memory of staff meetings we have by adding minutes (that could be collaboratively written in Google Drive). Due to some of the sensitive nature of information shared, these pages could be password protected too, especially the Staff Meeting page.

Google Apps Power!

I have been part of our system/district wide GAFE prototype since in began in early 2013. I am still amazed at the power of the that Google Apps for Education has in the classroom. This amazing collaboration tool is revolutionizing the way we teach and learn.

All of a sudden our students are able to collaborate so easily and working on projects with other students in seamless way and never have the frustration of losing their work through files transfers via email or flash drives.

After using Google Drive for a month or so, our students are still learning how to work collaboratively in documents together. We have been working a variety of projects where students are working together in a different documents. Here are some workflows we've begun to explore:

Google Docs - Working in Tables

When you have whole class working in an online Google Doc it can get a little crazy! We have found tables to be way to lessen the confusion. 

This video was blurred to protect the students' identity.

Forms - Collecting information to use or share later

Forms have to one of my favourite Google Tools. What an amazing way to collate information in a clean and user friendly way. We have played with various reasons for using forms with students. Here are a couple of screen shots of the form and the collated info.

Students were to read an article about the June Floods in Calgary and then
respond with their feelings in the form above. 

The results were then displayed to show what other people were feeling.
The ability to hide the name column was good to help give
some students more confidence.

In this form student filled out the form so it was as accurate and personal as possible.

All entries were then shared and students were then groups according to the
Smart they wanted to improve on

Spreadsheets - A different way to collate information.

Spreadsheets are a great to build and collate data from scratch without using forms.

This document was a way for students to check where they were at in a project.
It also made their progress visible to the rest of the group.

Google Drawing - Digital Mapping

This example is not student work but the idea was to be able to use technology to become more familiar with Canada and Alberta. I'm looking forward to using this tool in a collaborative way.

This was the first task we started with. It was also centred
around learning how to use the Google Drawing App.

The Questions on the right were to guide their work,
then they used the tools to draw over the map.

Stop... Collaborate & Research: #GAFE

Marlborough School is an early adopter for the CBE GAFE (Google Apps For Education) initiative.

We have been able to use GAFE for about 3 months now and it's only recently that I have noticed our staff and students really connecting with it and realizing its power! As teachers begun to use GAFE with their students it has quickly spread. The infectious nature of collaboration and success is unreal to watch.

This project was the first major project that one of our grade 6 teachers embarked on using GAFE. The subject, some would call fairly dry, was learning about the decision making process used by the Iroquois Confederacy. The students would eventually write about the topic as well as create a giant infographic.

Research and Assessing

Students worked together to research the Iroquois Confederacy. Using Google Forms, students read about different aspects of the Iroquois culture. They filled in a separate Google Form (picture above) with each new piece of information. All the information was then collated in a shared spreadsheet for all students to access.

Gathering and Communicating

Once all the information was collected, students formed their own groups and then synthesized their understanding of all the information. The first task was to come up with a few paragraphs which they would writing collaboratively using Google Docs. Students were able to simultaneously write in the document to form their finished piece of writing.

The groups also planned their infographic using the Google Drawing app. This was an interesting process of collaboratively drawing their plan which would utlimately become a massive poster on paper. All the group members were able draw simultaneously with the drawing app. They worked really well together on this part of the project in an app that no one had ever used before. It was amazing to see them adopt this new way of working together.

Once all the writing and drawing plans had been completed, the task was then to put all of the info onto paper. Because of the collaborative and organized nature of this project, groups have been completely focused and on task throughout. We really look forward to seeing the finished work.