Fall Again? It's Apple Time!

Fall 2011

This summer we received a gift of 60 iPads.  The 'seed' was planted in late spring.  We did some nurturing of the soil, pulled a few weeds, watered a few dreams and developed our growth and harvesting plan!  Last week the choice tablets were distributed to faculty and staff - and the growth spurt has begun!

Seattle Academy has a gift for grassroots ownership.  With minimal apps on the iPads we are modeling inquiry based exploration.  Faculty are encouraged to share their experiences and create foundational practices that support and enhance their teaching and learning.  Together we will chronicle the seasons through the use of a Moodle resource course and forums, shared research through Diigo groups, collaborative sharing through Google Sites and Google Docs, and a perhaps a collaborative app or two!

Our first focus meeting was held today.  These focus groups provide an opportunity to ask questions, comment, share new expertise, bring forward challenges, and engage the possibilities.  All were asked to share their thoughts and discoveries in a forum.  We are a learning community on a journey and I'm excited to see what paths and trails we will be exploring!

On Ward through the Orchard!

Oh! The Places You’ll Go!
by the incomparable Dr. Seuss

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.


(photo from Stone Garden in Philadelphia, ISTE 2011)

What happened to the Fall?

It seems that we were just in August a few days ago and suddenly it is November!  What happened?! 

A great deal has happened here at SAAS since this summer:

 Debut of Winter Tri 'paint job'

• Our Moodle site moved from our servers to Moodlerooms, a hosted site. Just as in any move we lost a few things, discovered new things, and are still moving the 'furniture and pictures' around to best suit our present needs!
• The great news is that we are current and up-to-date!
• Troubleshooting with the Moodlerooms support people has been a great help and they are awesome people!  
• We have many learning and teaching options for teachers and students to explore.
• and soon it will have a wonderful new 'paint job' just like a new house should!

We moved to Google Apps for Education! Collaboration, cooperation, creative exchange and creation of ideas, as well as global access is another step towards a holistic 21st century learning environment.  Google Docs, Google Sites, blogs..... the potential for learning and sharing learning will continue to keep us thoroughly immersed in the education adventure.

SAAStainability is becoming an integrated theme for our sustainability initiative across all departments and offices.  Check out our Google Site on Sustainability created for the PNAIS fall teacher conference in Portland:  Sustainability Resources (to share and contribute)  I am still awed by the Virtual Museum of the Origins created by Melinda's evolution seminar class last year.

The arrival of netbooks for some of the middle school math and English classes has increased our student to computer ratio to almost 1:1.  We now have full access carts in 10 classrooms, learning support, and enough to borrow for special projects.   The tech lab still serves as the Internet Cafe of Global Learning for classes and individuals. 

Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz we are moving along the yellow brick road of the future - "Podcasts! and Bloggers! and Tweets! Oh My!" with our collaborative friends Scarecrow, Tin Man, Lion, and Toto.  We have our tools at the ready, our content at our fingertips, and our capacity to create learning environments that prepare our students for college and life.

What happened to Fall?  Perhaps the more relevant question Where are we in our learning this fall? We've been learning, growing, creating and discovering the questions.

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.  ~Lloyd Alexander

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.  ~Jacob Bronowski 

Technology and the 21st Century at SAAS!

Tech du Soleil ...


Tuesday evening in the Orvis Theater, Art Center Lobby, and three classrooms a creative choreography of teaching, learning, and discovery was gracefully danced by a passionate troupe of students and teachers. I am often privileged to see these individual interactive performances but to have such a repertoire of engagement happening at one time on several stages was inspiring and energizing.

From an academic tech perspective I saw engaging learning opportunities with content being the driving passion and the assorted technologies being the tool that provide the means.  Moodle, Skype and Pamela, Podcaster, Stella modeling, wikis, Google sites, film and animation, Wordle, Glogster, ElectricMath, Esperanto, Makerbots, Robots, Blogs, Smartlessons, Smart Music, Heart Monitors, Response Systems, and the list goes on.

The Parent Association's enrichment committee provided a variety resources for parents, a list of teacher created websites, answers to frequently asked questions, and an opportunity to meet for coffee on the Friday after for further discussion and questions.  To check out their resource links and handouts visit the Enrichment page at http://isaas.seattleacademy.org/technology-and-21st-century-learning.

In the broader global context, the correlation to rubrics for 21^st Century Learning prepared by The Partnership for 21^st Century gives us a guide as we move further into this adventuresome learning environment.  I had the opportunity to correspond with them as I gathered the appropriate permissions to use their images and information for this blog. It was again, another opportunity to see how easily connections and collaborations can occur as we engage in purposeful technology.

“The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is the leading advocacy organization focused on infusing 21st century skills into education. The organization brings together the business community, education leaders, and policy makers to define a powerful vision for 21st century education to ensure every child's success as citizens and workers in the 21st century by providing tools and resources to help facilitate and drive change.” (http://www.p21.org/)

Here is their ‘picture’ of learning and defined attributes of student outcomes in a 21^st century education:

Twenty-First Century Student Outcomes

The elements described in this section as “21st century student outcomes” (represented by the rainbow) are the skills, knowledge and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21st century.

1. Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes

2. Learning and Innovation Skills 

• Creativity and Innovation
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Communication and Collaboration

3. Information, Media and Technology Skills

• Information Literacy
• Media Literacy
• ICT Literacy

4. Life and Career Skills 

 To paraphrase the infamous Dr. Seuss - Oh the places we will go!

TechShare Global Ed Montage

As we prepare for TechShare we've had numerous discussions about Global Education, going out of the box, beyond the walls, integrating appropriate tools that will connect our students and our learning in a way that is authentic, engaging, and realistically possible.

I have a few questions that would be helpful to the Global Montage!

• What are you doing in your schools? Share an example? A picture?
• What would you like to be doing?
• Ideas that you've seen or been inspired by to explore?
• Tools that would assist you in accomplishing your idea?

These are the questions we are asking of the participants when we send them off exploring:

• What does Global Education meant to you?
• How can technology impact global education in the classroom?
• What is your digital footprint on the world? - what did we mean by that?

I would love to have some short anecdotes and pictures, links, to incorporate into this project.

Thanks!!!!

Spring Games

May 28th


It has been a busy spring! In the midst of it all, we have been exploring the concept of gaming in the educational environment. It is an interesting conversation. As with any curricular tool, games need to have a purpose and enable the learners to engage in the subject in ways that create layered learnings. A quick email to our Gaming Group seemed to be an appropriate blog post.

Dear Gaming Explorers,
I’ve been gathering a bit of info since our last meeting (way back in March). Hopefully we will have a chance to gather and continue the discussion, set some clarifications/guidelines, and explore the engaging possibilities.

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=1762

Warlick’s current blog is on Games for Change, which seems especially relevant given the Global Classroom workshop we attended at Seattle U last week. I have been putting the games on Moodle (hidden at the moment) and will link to the resources from the World Affairs Council. I’ve also done a bit of exploring with second life – though it keeps crashing on my laptop (interesting??) and runs sluggishly on my lab desktop. Discovery Education (United Streaming) has a very interesting blog on Second life http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/secondlife . I have also added to my delicious site resources for exploring Second Life http://delicious.com/vbutler08/secondlife The gaming site is http://delicious.com/vbutler08/gaming_group I’ve added World Affairs to my network and they can be accessed at their delicious site http://delicious.com/globalclassroom

Thanks! Feel free to add to any of my bookmarks. I made a wordle of my tags. If you have a chance play a bit with Wordle http://www.wordle.net/create

Spring Snapshots

Whirlwind! Spring Days! Conferences! Webinars! Moodle-ing! Applications! Projects! Wordle!!!

The past few weeks so many people have been sharing projects that are snapshots of connected learning.

Snapshot from English: Connecting students with their perspective on their own learning styles -A while back, I sent out a link for the “Two Views” project my English 11 kids were working on. In a nutshell, I asked kids to take 2 photos that represent the way they learn; then write text that explains the images and any relationship between the two.


Snapshot from History: Connecting students and their personal family histories using genealogy resources - If you are having success exploring your family's history, then write a 2 page paper explaining the story of one "branch" of your family and how it fits into the historical context. One half of your paper should focus on the historical events of the time and the other half should focus on your family (or family members) particular story.


Snapshot from MS History: Connecting students with Ancient Egypt as virtual persons in the past - Our blog, “Ancient Egyptian Travel Journal,” is aimed at exploring ancient Egypt. Its goal is to come to a better understanding of what it must have been like to be alive back then. One of the best features of a blog is the ability of peers or others who share your interests to comment and, therefore, add content to the blog. The result is that we all get to share our work as well as learn from the work done by others.


Snapshot from MS Math: Connecting students with economics and finances - Student groups collaborate, cheer and moan, as their finances increase or decline. The spontaneous conversations on the viability of a particular stock, short buys, long term possibilities, a greater awareness of the financial challenges facing us today.


Snapshot from the upperschool: Connecting with students on their social network - using the messaging feature on Facebook to help students stay current, it does not require that you are 'friends' but does get information out in connected environment.


Snapshots, just a few of the hundreds that occur each day in and out of the classroom. Snapshots that reach beyond the walls, beyond the school day, beyond our specific subject areas. Snapshots of connections, collaborations, relationships, life, learning.

Snapshot: Wordle found at http://www.wordle.net/

Reflections - organization, conversations, writing

I have been going through an organizational phase - documents, moodle classes, to do lists, tech tracking documents, moving piles of reading material that I know is worthwhile to dip into at some time......


Reflections haven't been in form of blogging these past few weeks but in conversations. I love showing people around our school. Seeing what we do through someone else's eyes affirms the connections we strive to make on so many levels. These past weeks I have spent time with the Digipen representative. We ambled around all the buildings and he noted the art, the music, the spaces, the tone, the dynamic of the students. We talked about the ideas of programming and gaming. How do we make that relevant to the students experiences? Can we let it get messy?