Showing posts with label collaboration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collaboration. Show all posts

Thursday, August 2, 2018

The Building Learning Communities Conference More Than Lives Up To Its Name

Source: ASIDE 2018

Source: November Learning
This year’s Building Learning Communities - Education Conference 2018 more than lived up to its goal of fostering dialogues between talented, dedicated educators. Sponsored by November Learning (@NLearning), the BLC18 conference took place from Tuesday, July 24, to Friday, July 28, 2018, in the beautiful and perfectly situated Boston Park Plaza Hotel. The industry-leading keynote speakers and the expert presenters were all chosen personally by Alan November (@globalearner).

We don’t think we have ever been to an educational get-together, whether formal or informal, that created as true a sense of community as this past week's conference. The engaged, committed educators were all open and candid in sharing ideas and dilemmas, and the tone of the conference was set early by Alan November to encourage conversation among every voice in the room.

Source: Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence; Lafayette PTA

The opening keynote address by Dr. Marc A. Brackett, PhD, (@marcbrackett, @YaleEmotion) stressed the importance of emotional intelligence, as he introduced the audience to Yale’s RULER approach and mood meter. The closing keynote provided a fitting bookend to this message as Ted Dintersmith (@dintersmith) author of Most Likely To Succeed and What School Could Be, as well as the film "Most Likely To Succeed," talked passionately about how schools can reinvent themselves to better serve today's learners.

Source: Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence
As non-computer programmers, we were somewhat bewildered by Stephen Wolfram's (@stephen_wolfram) talk on Thursday afternoon. We were amazed, however, by the potential of his WolframAlpha search engine, which seems ready to upend modern information-gathering. Its “smart” algorithm coalesces data and far-flung facts on any topic (or combination of topics) to make most traditional homework assignments obsolete.

All of the presenters were clearly prepared and heartfelt in offering a good balance between practical teaching tools and theoretical learning frameworks. Some of our favorite sessions included:



We would like to thank all of the collaborative teachers and administrators who attended both of our sessions: "Where Learning Meets Design: Taking Control Of The Visual Classroom" and "Student Videos: Empower Creativity And Visual Journalism." We would also like to thank everyone for generously returning after the hotel fire alarm interrupted the first presentation. We greatly appreciate the range of questions and ideas that were shared during the talks, and we are grateful for the kind feedback we received.


We were also honored to be interviewed by Bob Greenberg (@bobgreenberg) for his Brainwaves Anthology series on YouTube. His videos celebrate teachers who make an impact, and his interviews with international thought-leaders highlight many of the progressive ideas changing traditional models of learning.


Finally, we would like to thank the tremendous conference organizers who staged such an incredibly smooth and well-run week of professional development. They fed us extremely well, with a full breakfast every morning, a welcoming dinner for presenters, drinks and snacks throughout, evening cocktail receptions, and, of course, the favorite dessert dance on Thursday.


If you are in the Back Bay area of Boston, Erbaluce is a charming little Italian restaurant two blocks from the hotel, and Lucca is an absolutely delicious extension near the Prudential Center of the popular North End establishment.

We look forward to seeing everyone at BLC19!

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Posted by Mercer Hall and Patricia Russac at 2:57 PM 285 comments
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Sunday, November 29, 2015

Social Media Is An Opportunity - Not A Problem In The Classroom

Source: ASIDE 2015

The resolute attitude of many schools to resist the “Social Age” by blocking websites within their walls strikes at the core of what it means to collectively share ideas. The system seems stuck in the notion that kids will do bad things if they have access to social media. Hello! They have access to it anyway, just not in school. We shake our heads every time we hear educators who want to share digital projects but can’t because of a school’s firewall. Some educators depend on the very students they teach to share when the leave the building in order to promote their work.

Source: ASIDE 2015
We value the opportunities at our disposal for creating digital portfolios with our students, running Tumblr pages for the humanities, maps, and classwork, using Twitter (@BCDS_History_56, @BCDS_History_78>)and Kidblog, and sharing through Padlet to engage in the open practice of real-life skills.

Social media is not the culprit. In this day and age, digital environments are not separate from physical environments. If we want our students to understand the importance of building a healthy, digital footprint for prospective college applications and employment, then practice is imperative. It can’t be taught from a book.

Source: ASIDE 2015
Like other educators, we see the value in using social media. We are fortunate to work in a school that believes students learn by actively and responsibly participating in an online community of practice. We firmly believe that learning communities that allow students to use social media in their education build stronger digital citizens. They also encourage parents to be more proactive in the online behavior of their children by participating as digital partners.

We made a passionate plea to educators in our presentation, entitled “Tear Down This Firewall: Using Social Media To Engage Students And Parents,” at the annual NYSCATE conference. We showed multiple ways that we have incorporated social media in the elementary and middle school classrooms, as well as demonstrated how the skills learned from social media include context, framing, information, perspective, questioning, and problem-solving. We hope the solid foundation in instruction behind our students’ work will provide motivation for others to approach their administrations to unblock valuable web resources for learning. We included our SlideShare presentation here.


Tear Down This Firewall: Using Social Media To Engage Students & Parents from The American Society For Innovation Design In Education

The value of modeling, practicing, and incorporating social media into the curricula to better educate learners for a world that exists now is vital to their development. It builds the collectiveness of the community and a trusted bond between all participants, including administrators, faculty, students, and parents. Most importantly, it takes the fear out of the equation.

 In 2010, Rachel Botsam coined the term “collaborative consumption” in her critically acclaimed book, What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live. The theory of “collaborative consumption” is the reinvention of traditional market behaviors that are taking place at a rate not seen before as a result of technology. These changes affect more than just the economy; they influence and disrupt traditional learning environments as well. It shouldn’t be a “Them vs. Us” mentality; instead, it should build a collaborative network of making, sharing, and responding.

Source: ASIDE 2015
Yet despite this social revolution in an on-demand, real-time world, schools are still resistant to change, even though educators try desperately to show the value of collaborative work by using social networking.

As for the students, the firewalls may not be crumbling yet inside the bricks and mortar, but outside, learning takes on a life of its own, unfiltered without restrictions. They hunt and gather wherever they can, and technology has opened that door.

Students need to construct their social capital through shared networks, and schools need to participate in building it, not restricting it.

For other resources please see:

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Posted by Mercer Hall and Patricia Russac at 10:19 AM 22 comments
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Saturday, February 7, 2015

Collaborative Hearts And Minds Help Kids Cope

Source: ASIDE 2015
With the increasing questions we received from our sixth graders about the abhorrent news this past week, we realized they needed to do something to make them feel they were sending a positive message to help the world be a more peaceful place. Eleven- and twelve-year-olds hear the news, and most have far more access to content than their parents realize. Their questions abound and need an outlet. As middle school educators, we know this.

Source: ASIDE 2015
So with our friend and colleague, Francine Wisnewski (@fwisnewski), we decided to bring hearts and minds together to let the kids create a message to share on social media and with the school community. We asked them that each finished design somehow include a heart, map, and peace sign. That’s it. How they incorporated the criteria and with whom they worked, or not, was up to them.

We cherish the flexibility in our curricula that allows us to stop everything to promote mindfulness with our learners. It does not matter that the schedule listed math and history; we pulled the kids together to address their concerns about world conflict and violence.

Source: ASIDE 2015
We continually try to build the hearts and minds of our young learners to be peace builders, peacemakers, and peacekeepers. As adults, we understand the turmoil in the world, and sometimes we just have to stop to help them cope. It’s worth every minute. If we don’t, we lose the power of positive thinking that the world so much needs.

For other resources, please see:

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Posted by Mercer Hall and Patricia Russac at 8:53 AM 20 comments
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