2/26/2018 1 Comment Im a SOLE man...Every Friday our DLC team meets for our PLC time. Each week a different member of our team leads learning to continue our growth as digital learning coaches. This past Friday Sam Neal, the DLC at Mockingbird and Pinkerton, led learning on Self-Organized Learning Environments or SOLEs, which draw on student's natural curiosity to create a dynamic space for them to learn, interact and develop critical problem-solving skills. Sam had our team experience a SOLE session and then during our reflect time we discussed the process and why it is beneficial for students to participate in these experiences. There are three parts to a SOLE session. A big question, the investigation and a review. Part 1: The Big question
Part 2: The InvestigationOnce Sam answered all of our clarifying questions she told us to get to work. We decided how to break into groups, we decided what resources to use to research our question and we decided how we wanted to present our findings to the larger group at the end. The investigation time is ALL student driven. The teacher acts as a facilitator asking open supportive questions and giving encouragement. In the Blues Brothers song Soul Man the second verse starts with the lyrics "Got what I got the hard way The students might have a hard time organizing themselves, finding the best resources and working together to finish THE FIRST TIME. If they struggle and make mistakes they will learn from them and figure out how to be more successful in future SOLEs.
Part 3: ReviewIn part 3, the review stage, the learners present their findings. This is the most important stage because this is where the learners have to figure out how to effectively communicate what they have found and how they found it. If the groups do not have a presentation, do not answer the big question or are presenting on a completely different topic that is OK! Each team has a chance to hear "I likes" and "I wonders" from the rest of the group. This is also the best stage to talk about goals for next time.
Being involved in a SOLE session really opened my eyes to a new way to approach integrating research, growing 21st century skills and tackling real world issues that correlate to our curriculum. SOLEs really allow learners to do what Mrs. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus always challenged us to do... Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!
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2/26/2018 0 Comments An apple a week: Book CreatorThe latest installment of the Winter blog series An Apple a Week is all about an amazing tool for Chrome called Book Creator. With Book Creator for Chrome, our kids can:
Did you know the Apple a Week blog series is also a podcast? You can catch up on reading or listen to an episode by clicking the button below!
It was such an honor to be able to travel to Austin with my DLC team for a week this month to learn from other forward thinking educators at the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) Conference. It is hard to be away from my campuses for a week, but the conference allowed me to deepen my learning and bring back some ideas for educators to use in their classroom. Over the next 5 weeks I will be sharing my top 5 takeaways from TCEA! If there is something you find useful and want to chat about it, let me know! #1: Accessibility features in ios 11Apple offered so many good sessions to highlight some of their education features. One of my favorite sessions was titled "Learning with iPad: It's Personal". This session focused on accessibility features on the iPad that can help ALL students feel successful in learning.
After the simulations we were given time to explore some of the accessibility features on the iPad. My two favorite features are Typing Feedback and Speak Selection. Both of these features help struggling or beginning readers be more independent while writing or reading on the iPad. Check out the instructions and videos below to see how they work. A couple more features worth mentioning are Screen recording with iOS 11 and Scanning a QR code with the Camera App. These features save you so many taps, allow you to use less apps, and you do not get those annoying advertisements in the QR reader apps! You can read about all of the accessibility features from the session in the presentation below.
Last week our DLC team had the chance to attend the TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) conference in Austin. We attended many great sessions and also had the chance to facilitate a few. My teammates, Alli, Sam, Brian and Monica, facilitated “Apple in Education, We Say Yes!” to encourage others to see the amazing educational value of Keynote, Pages, Numbers and Everyone Can Code. Even if you were not at TCEA, you still have the chance to learn from their amazing resources. All you have to do is go to www.flipgrid.com/AppleEDUyes, select a learning topic and click on the attached resource to begin exploring. I would love to see or hear your ideas for how these tools can be used in your classrooms! |
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