Collaboration Without Boundaries

I honestly can’t say enough about how Twitter has changed my teaching.   Like a lot of people, when I first signed up for an account I didn’t really get it.  I didn’t have any followers, I wasn’t sure how to find people to follow (wasn’t interested in following celebrities), and even when I figured that out I wasn’t sure who to follow.  I ended up giving it a half-hearted try and then didn’t sign in again for several months.

Luckily, Sarah got me to log back in again and this time I was committed to giving it a real go.  The thing with Twitter is, that it is only as powerful as you make it.  I started by looking at Sarah’s followers and followed educators she was following.  I also signed up for Tweetdeck which made following Twitter conversations and hashtag chats much easier.  Each day I found more educators that I wanted to follow and my PLN began to grow.

Through Twitter, I touch base daily with other educators all over the world. I can’t begin to put in words how much my PLN (Personal Learning Network) has changed my teaching and learning.

Because of Twitter I have:

• a constant stream of information flowing through my twitter feed that I can dip into whenever I like
• Professional Development 24/7
• a feeling of connectedness, when before I felt very isolated in my little school
• a sounding board for ideas
• other educators always will to answer a question, suggest a resource, or help to troubleshoot one of my many problems
• a wealth of talents to draw upon
• educators ready to support my student bloggers and provide them with that authentic audience that is so powerful (I highly recommend the #comments4kids hashtag)
• an easy way to connect with other classes all over the world
• the ability to find professionals in other fields who can help bring learning to life in my classroom
• People who will challenge my thinking and push me outside my comfort zone
• A place to meet weekly and participate in chats, like the Daily 5 chat
• A group of global educators I can truly call my friends even though we have never met in person

Here a few great Twitter resources that might be helpful:

1. Twitter in 60 seconds

2. Twitter 102 for Educators- @stumpteacher

http://youtu.be/P8nCl_Db-QI

3. Twitter in the K-8 Classroom- @langwitches

http://www.scribd.com/doc/63331406/Twitter-in-K-8-Classroom-Globally-Connected-Learning

I am so thankful for Sarah’s encouragement and for the amazing connections and growth I owe to Twitter and my PLN!

It seems a long time coming, but we finally finished our first episode of, What’s Up at AJ?

Since Tech Club started in October the students have worked very hard to learn the skills necessary to create their own news show. We have stumbled and learned together along the way. This program is definitely a work in progress. It is a great chance for the students to learn and practice new technology skills each week. They have learned about taking photos and videos (still need some work on this), lighting, using a green screen, and editing. They are also learning a lot about the creative process behind putting a show like this together. I love watching them help each other and problem solve through the “glitches” that regularly pop-up.

One of the biggest challenges has been only having two computers that are able to run our editing software. With so many students in Tech Club, keeping everyone involved and doing something meaningful all the time is difficult. Next year I may look at having Tech Club one day a week and News Crew, with a much smaller group of students, the other day each week.

Episode two is already in production and we are looking forward to making improvements and trying new things. We would love any tips or suggestions you might have.

The students in my class love to collaborate. Since we started blogging nearly two years ago we have made many connections with other classes in different parts of the world. We’ve written stories together, compared our schools and communities, and have even taken dance lessons over Skype. We have just finished our most recent collaborative project called, Our World, Our Stories.

Our World, Our Stories was a 7 week project that I was fortunate enough to be involved in. The students in my grade 2/3 class had the opportunity to collaborate with students from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Belize, and Ghana.

We learned about life in different parts of the world by sharing with each other about a different topic each week.

Week One: Typical School Day
Week Two: Recess Activities
Week Three: Food
Week Four: Our Local Environment
Week Five: Traditional Stories and Festivities
Week Six: Traditional Song
Week Seven: Group Song and Story

We shared our posts and wrote comments to each other on our group blog. The students commented on similarities, differences, and always had many questions to ask their global buddies.

For our final week the students and teachers recorded a song called, Make New Friends and recorded the audio to go along with a wonderful book written by Mem Fox and illustrated by Leslie Staub called, Whoever You Are. The students really understood the message that no matter how different we are, we are all the same. An extra special surprise was that Mem Fox and Leslie Staub both left wonderful comments on our final post.

This was a very powerful project, not only for the students, but for the teachers involved as well. I feel so lucky to have made connections with these teachers. I learn from each of them, and the other educators in my PLN (Professional Learning Network), every day. My students have seen how we collaborate together, how we plan, how we solve problems, and how we celebrate our successes.

The most amazing thing to me is the fact that, here we are a little school of 50 students, on a small island (that can’t even be seen on many world maps), and my students don’t feel isolated. We had a wonderful discussion on Friday about our “classroom”. We decided that our classroom isn’t defined by its four walls. Our classroom is a global classroom, a place where we learn from and with other children and teachers all over the world.

In our class we love to blog. We have a class blog, blogs we collaborate on with other students around the world, and the students all have their own individual blogs as well (the grade 2 students just started their own blogs last week).

One of the reasons we started to blog was so that we would be able to communicate with our parents, families, friends, and others who would read our posts. We wanted a way to share the wonderful learning that was happening in our classroom with the people we care about and the world. We also wanted these people to be able to participate in our learning and have discussions with us through blog comments.

We have made amazing connections with students and teachers from around the world that we now call our friends, but we haven’t had as much success with getting our families and loved ones involved. In an effort to strengthen that connection we decided to make November, Family Blogging Month.

Through my PLN on Twitter I was able to talk with other educators who have done the same thing and learn from their experience. Linda Yollis (@lindayollis) from California and Kathleen Morris (@kathleen_morris) from Australia are two of the teachers that helped me to figure out how to make Family Blogging Month work for my students. Linda shared links to her Educational Bogging Wiki and class blog which both discuss Family Blogging Month. You can also see a post on Family Blogging month by Kathleen and her teaching partner Kelly Jordan here.

Following their lead, I made a blog post describing Family Blogging Month and also sent a similar note home. I used Jing, a free screen capture program, to make a step by step “Commenting How To” for those that might not be familiar with commenting on a blog. I also made sure that the students would know how to help their families at home.

So far, Family Blogging Month is off to a great start and hopefully is the beginning of an even stronger school and home connection. The students are really excited about getting their families involved and love seeing their comments when we check the blog each morning.

Have you done anything similar to this before?
Do you have any other ideas for getting parents and families involved using technology?

My piece of this project revolves around an after school technology club.  Two weeks ago we held our first meeting of the new school year just to see how many students were interested.  Over 20 students in grades 3-7 showed up, which was both exciting and a little overwhelming.  I think it is fantastic that almost all the intermediate students in our school have signed up (We only have 50 students total in our school).

Last year we had a fairly large group too and I have to admit that I found it a little exhausting some weeks, especially at the beginning when they were learning some of the basics that would help them along the way.  To make things more manageable this year, I have decided to separate the Tech Club into two groups and have each group on a different day.

I have 3 main goals for out time together in Tech Club each week:

1. Learning about digital citizenship and cyber safety
2. Learning about different Web 2.0 tools
3. Facilitating a student created news show

The news show is going to be the main focus.  Towards the end of last school year we realized that the students needed a project that they could really sink their teeth into and that would use their newly acquired tech skills.  We came up with the idea for a student created news show which they titled, What’s Up at AJ?  They worked on graphics and a sound track for the beginning (both of which were too hard to incorporate with the limited tools we had to use last year), thought up the interviews they wanted to do, wrote scripts, filmed the interviews, and edited the raw footage.

Here is last year’s pilot episode:

This year we have so much more to work with because of this project and the support of our school parent group.  We have a green screen and lighting kit, new editing software, iTouches,  iPads, tripods (this should help with the nausea caused by watching our first episode), a microphone, and apps like GarageBand for creating soundtracks and voice overs.

I’m really looking forward to learning with the students each week.  Most of this is all new to the students and to me.  I love that we learn, experiment, and discover together!

Does your school offer a technology club (would love to collaborate with other groups)?

Do you have any online resources that you like to use for teaching about digital citizenship and cyber safety?

What are some of your favourite Web 2.0 tools for students?

This week I had the opportunity to do a lot of learning at Cowichan Valley’s Touch ‘N Go technology camp.  Sarah and I traveled down island to take part in two days of the five day conference. One of the reasons I was so excited about attending Touch ‘N Go was that they were offering sessions directly related to the news show the students and I will be working on this year as part of this project. Kelly Janzen, an Apple Distinguished Educator from Toronto, was ready to fill my mind with all things iMovie and Garageband.

The iMovie session was a full day of hands-on movie making magic. We started by learning about all the different parts of a project: pre-production, production, and post-production.  I can see that last year I did not spend as much time in pre-production as I should have.  She had some great ideas for story boarding and made me see how important it is for the students to have all aspects of the movie thought out and in their minds before shooting ever begins.  When we begin working on the news show students will have to present their:

• Treatment-the basic story idea
• Storyboard- What the viewers will actually see
• Script-What will be said by the actors or as a voice over
• Set/Costumes/Location
• Plan for work distribution- how they will share the work

Using iMovie is really going to change how we handle production and post-production.  Last year we only had the Flip and the software it came with to do our shooting and editing.  This year we will shoot our video and stills using the iTouches and do the editing on the iPads.  In our session we learned about using stills and video in our projects and about using voice overs (something I had never thought of) as a great alternative to just having the actors memorize lines.  We also learned about creating soundtracks to go with our projects (a post about what I learned in the GarageBand session will be coming soon).

After learning the basics of iMovie Kelly shared some examples of different projects we might want to do with our students and we saw some amazing student work samples. I think that both the documentaries and the infomercial parodies could be worked into our Tech Club news show. The documentary style would be a great way to add some community pieces to the show later on in the year once we are comfortable with the basics.

In the afternoon we learned about green screens, looked at iMovie on the iPad, and made our own short movies. I am really excited about how easy the green screening was using iMovie and can’t wait to try it with the equipment purchased by our school PAC.   I did find out though, that iMovie on the iPad does not include the green screen feature and so I am looking at purchasing a Macbook that I can use at school for this.

I can’t wait to get started with the Tech Club kids!

Does anyone have any movie making tips to share?

Do you have any advice for using iMovie with students?

What a weekend!

On Friday, part of our order arrived and was ready to be picked up.  I spent the weekend setting up the iPads, an iTouch, and the LiveScribe Pens.  I am a PC person and so this was my first encounter with setting up and using anything Apple.  The LiveScribe pens were also new to me.

My part of this project is a student created news show called What’s Up at AJ?    We will use the iTouch to film our segments and iMovie on the iPads to do the editing.

I decided to take my first look at iMovie last night. I shot a short video clip, opened the app, and couldn’t figure out a darn thing! I tweeted that I was going to have to find a how to video to help me get started and in no time at all Jonah Salsich, a fantastic teacher in my PLN, sent me a great link to a You Tube video.

I am also looking forward to attending Touch’N Go 2011 – Cowichan Technology Camp later this month with Sarah. I am signed up for a full day of iMovie and a half day of Garage Band. Hopefully this will help get me ready for September and even if I am still stumbling a bit, I know that I will be able to learn from and with my students as we figure things out together.

Here are a few of the things I learned this weekend:
1. LiveScribe pens come with the greatest manual I have ever seen. All instruction manuals should be interactive
2. Shopping for apps in the iTunes store is highly addictive!
3. App Tracker is a great app that lists apps that have been reduced in price (found some great 2 and 3 dollar apps that were now free).
4. You cannot clone/mirror one iPad (with apps organized into folders) onto other ipads (I finally had to contact Apple customer service after many failed attempts to make this work). This was the only part of the set-up that didn’t go smoothly.
5. This is going to be one exciting year!