It's All About Learning

7 Month’s of Learning Wordle

Wordle is a very interesting and fun Web 2.0 tool to use. It is great for brainstorming, demonstrating learning, and even for projects about a topic. I have used it as a reflection tool as well.

A short time after starting my blog in July, 2011, I ran the URL of my blog through Wordle to see came up. In case you do not know how Wordle works, it represents words in a visual representation. The more times a word appears, the bigger the word is in the visual representation.

This can be used as a reflective tool because after running your blog URL through Wordle, you will see which words are used the most in your blog. If a word is used a lot, then the word will be large. If it is not used often, it will be smaller.

I was pleasantly surprised when I ran my blog’s URL through Wordle. This is the visual representation of my learning over the past 7 months.

You will see that both Students and Twitter are quite large. That is great because it really clearly demonstrates two things that are important to my growth and development as a teacher and leader in education. The students in my school teach me something new each and every day, as does Twitter.

There really are no better tools for learning.

Have you tried running your blog URL through Wordle lately? If not, you may want to try it to see the visual representation of your blog.

If you do, I’d love to see what comes up! Please share.

Open Your Hearts

I’ve been doing a great deal of reflecting these days (as I always do), but this has been a bit different. I usually reflect upon my practise, decisions, teaching, leadership, parenting, and relationships. Last night, with all that has been happening at my school lately, I did a lot of reflecting on the students at my school.

As I have written about in the past, I work as a Vice-Principal at an Inner-City school. While there are struggles in all schools to a degree, there are so many here. It’s not the academic struggles that had me thinking last night (although the academic needs here are great), but, rather, the personal struggles of our students and our reactions to these struggles.

To be effective and truly make a difference in the lives of these children (all children), we need to open our hearts and take these kids in. For many, the struggles are so great at home. We try our best to manage their struggles and help them at school with respect to these challenges. Some of these struggles and our responses to them include:Continue reading “Open Your Hearts”

Powerful Collaboration

A couple Monday’s ago, we provided one of our Grade 1 teachers with the opportunity to visit another Grade 1 teacher in our school district. She was going to observe the teacher doing morning routines, Guided Reading, calendar, math and everything else that happens before lunch. As a result, my principal and I had the opportunity to teach in her Grade 1 classroom while she was gone.

During my 2 hours with the grade 1 class, I thought it would be a great time to introduce the students to the iPads our school just purchased. The kids were a little hesitant at first when I started explaining that we were going to do something different. This is common for students of this age. Change can be difficult for them, but, given the opportunity, they do adjust fairly quickly. Anxiously, they pointed to the daily agenda on the board and said, “But, Mrs. Henriksen, we have Math, Spelling, and Journals to do!” I reassured them that we were indeed going to do all of these things, but we were going to use the iPads to do this work instead. They looked relieved, but skeptical.Continue reading “Powerful Collaboration”

Twitter for Newbies

Having been on Twitter for almost 7 months now, I am still amazed at the professional development I experience on a daily basis from people on Twitter. Some days, I only spend 10 minutes on Twitter in the morning, but even in that time, I still learn a great deal! There are always gems that people are posting including, links of blog posts or articles, and positive messages to retweet (RT).

In the last few months, since the beginning of our Engaging the Digital Learner Dinner series the Information Technology Helping Teachers have been hosting, people have been expressing more interest in technology and Twitter as a learning tool. I am also involved with a wonderful group of administrators in a study group we call, “21st Century Learning”. We have been talking a little about Twitter in that group as well. I have posted many links and ideas to our private wiki about Twitter, but I thought I should maybe get the links out to a wider audience.

A resource explaining and discussing Social Media

OpenBook: A K-12 Tech Playbook for Teachers

This is a great introduction to Social Media.

How to Videos

(of items explained in the Playbook)

Twitter (for beginners)

Twitter is one of the best professional development tools out there!

Take a look at some of the videos and links below to help you in your Twitter Exploration.

Getting Started Video (Tweetdeck explained):Continue reading “Twitter for Newbies”

Posterous!

Have you ever heard of Posterous?

Until recently, I had not heard of Posterous. Heidi Hass Gable (@HHG) introduced it briefly to my Study Group before Christmas. As a result, we decided to focus on Posterous at our Study Group meeting recently. I must say, I am so happy that Heidi introduced this tool to us and here’s why:

– It is very easy to use. Even teachers who know nothing about blogging, will be able to use this tool.

– It saves time! I can now have students (or parents) email their blog post to the Posterous email account (which I can moderate) and their blog post will automatically be posted on our school’s Success Blog! How easy (and efficient)!

– It will format all photos you attach to the email – either individually (if less than 5 photos) or in an album (for 6+ photos) automatically.

– If you place a youtube link in the blog, it will automatically embed the actual video directly into the blog.

– I no longer have to set up the actual blog (with my personal passwords) in the individual classrooms for the students to complete, they can simply email me. Simple.

While I have just started using Posterous, I think that it has so many benefits and I can see many applications for its future use!

If you haven’t already done so, check out Posterous!

** flickr photo by gallagher.michaelsean

Encourage, Don’t Shame

Here we are, at the beginning of a new era in education – 21st Century learning, where technology may play an integral role. For many of us, it is a very exciting time, full of possibilities. For others (and even sometimes the above group may feel this way at times as well), to say it is challenging would be an understatement. As a result, it is important to make this technology as user-friendly and accessible as possible – to everyone.

Some may say that using mobile devices, such as iPods and iPads, with “drill and practise” – type apps, is a waste of time. I disagree with this position for a couple of reasons:

First of all, if we want to have teachers get used to usingtechnology in their classrooms, we have to have give them the opportunity to use them in a way that is easy, relatively stress-free and uncomplicated, at least to start. If that means that they use these mobile devices with their students initially with “drill and practise” math apps, so be it. It makes them more comfortable and, thus, more willing to take more risks in their future use of the iPads. These are educators who may never have even thought to bring these devices intotheir classroom at all. Providing them with encouragement and an easy way to begin to incorporate technology will have long-term impact.Continue reading “Encourage, Don’t Shame”

Math Playground Apps

Our school district has a wonderful Math Problem Solving resource which teachers are encouraged to sign out for their schools. It consists of a couple of rolling 8-drawer storage bins filled with various problem-solving activities for students to complete. It is wonderfully organized and self-contained. It also has many different levels for each activity. All students can be successful and challenged at the same time with this engaging resource. It’s wonderful. Our district calls this resource Math Playground.

Last week, we had our Administrator Study Group meeting at a colleagues school. It’s always great to have our meetings in the schools, instead of in a restaurant, because then we get to see what is actually happening in other schools. Before our meeting began, a few of use talked with a teacher about some of the apps their school has on their iPads.

So, before our meeting, in our discussions about apps, one of the teachers told us about a couple of the folders on their school iPads that relate to Problem Solving. There were some that were new to me which I was excited to be introduced to (and vice-versa, I think). These Problem Solving apps are in folders on their iPads, titled, Playground.

I love the name Playground and the connection it made to the Math Playground that our district offers, so I changed the name of our Problem Solving folders to Playground folders.

Here are the apps we have in our Playground folders:Continue reading “Math Playground Apps”

Everyday Learning

I haven’t been blogging or tweeting much these days. It’s just been so busy. Work has been busy, but so has my home life. With all this busyness, my learning has been going strong.

Here are some of the things I’ve learned over the past couple of weeks.

1. It is going to be uber-challenging having 3 kids with birthdays within 4 weeks of Christmas! Oh my! My youngest son turned 1 on December 30. My other son turned 4 on January 7 and my daughter will be 7 on January 21st. Yikes! To say it has been busy at home is an understatement. What on earth was I thinking when I planned this?!?

2. Having big birthdays with 20+ children is expensive and will not be happening every year! We will have to find an alternative to these big birthday bashes where we try to invite all the kids in our child’s classes. It’s not the cost so much though, it’s that we can’t end up inviting everyone. As they get older, their number of friends increase exponentially, it seems. So, instead of just inviting all the kids in my daughter’s class, she wants to invite children from her class AND the other 3 grade 1 classes as well (children she went to kindergarten with last year). Oh my. That’s tough. It difficult to decide who to invite. You really don’t want to leave anyone out (I often felt left out as a child), but you can’t have 80 children at a birthday party so you must limit it somehow. Tough. (If anyone has answers to this one, please let me know).

3. I learned how to make marshmallow fondant. Why would I want to do that, you ask? Well, to make cacti for a Cars cake my son wanted for his birthday, of course. Take a look:Continue reading “Everyday Learning”

Things to Remember for 2012

I was hoping to do more blogging over this holiday season, but, as you can see, that just didn’t happen. With my entire family being sick, Christmas shopping and the festivities that followed, and now the planning of birthdays (my baby turns 1 tomorrow and my other two have birthdays in January), things have been rather busy.

But, as we get ready for another year to come to an end, time to reflect is important. It is not until we really reflect on what we do and have done will we make any changes.

Some things to remember (in no particular order) as we head into a new year (I’ll keep this short, as I have birthdays to continue planning):Continue reading “Things to Remember for 2012”

Study Group – Parental Engagement

Our district does a great job promoting professional development from within. There are a number of opportunities for us as administrators (as I posted here). I am involved in a Study Group focusing on 21st Century Learning and Engaging the Digital Learner. We are concentrating our discussions right now on the book: Leading 21st Century Schools. We have a private wiki that we add our comments about each chapter to regularly.

This past week, we had one of our Study Group meetings where we met in person (and not just “online” in our wikispace). We were fortunate to have a guest come speak with us about Parental Engagement (with or without technology). I want to thank Heidi Hass Gable (@HHG on Twitter) for joining us during our study group session. We learned a great deal and got a number of practical ideas for engaging parents in our schools.

We started our session together talking about iPads, different apps, and answering questions for one another. It was a great sharing session, in which all of us learned a lot I think. Heidi was a great help in this area as well. As time ticked on, we continued our talk with Heidi about parental engagement. She asked us a number of questions, including, “What does parental engagement mean to you? What does it look like in your schools? What has been your experience with parental involvement/engagement?” Very powerful and thought-provoking questions, indeed.Continue reading “Study Group – Parental Engagement”