Pen Pals: Connecting Across Oceans

This past term, after a few years of saying I will do it, I finally got some learners to write letters to children in another country AND sent the letters. Two things happened in June that made this possible, three months later: 1) I met some very willing partners at ISTE (hey, there is a theme going through a few of these posts, isn't there?) and 2) My team back in New Zealand also wanted to connect with other schools. Having the support on both sides proved crucial in getting this off the ground.

Part of the reason I wanted to do this was that all too often, writing is done for the sake of writing. I wanted to give my learners a chance to write for a purpose (in this case, communicating with someone and fostering a long-distance friendship, maybe), and to connect with children around the world.

So as a whole habitat, we did a lesson early in the term on writing letters and all of our children wrote a draft (albeit, none of them actually had set buddies at the time). I was able to work out through one of my ISTE connections 11 learners in the US (North Dakota to be exact) who could receive letters. So a week or so ago, I had my 11 learners write their good drafts, filled an envelope and sent them off. I've gotten word that they arrived (thank goodness my handwriting wasn't TOO bad!) and the responses will come back shortly. I'm pretty excited for that. Here are the letters that my learners have written:

One of the biggest difficulties in this whole thing was arranging buddies. Some of my fellow learning coaches had some schools to write to, and some of them fell through. I was only able to (currently) connect with one other classroom (though I am still in talks with some others at a school in North Carolina). I think though, that I'm going to continue to be persistent. I'm still looking for some buddies, so if anyone is looking for some pen pal buddies (anywhere in the world), leave a comment here or a DM on twitter and I'll get back to you!

International Dot Day

One of the connections that I made at ISTE 2017 was with the Global Collaboration Network and some of its members (thanks to a night of karaoke). A few weeks ago I was sent this tweet:

@Doctor_Harves @michaelteacher @mrnamvas @GruntledChalkie @edutinker join in this week & more. Global connection https://t.co/tsxyMcHn6D pic.twitter.com/s93rckXPet

— Amanda Rogers (@TheEdsaneT) September 9, 2017

I was interested in making some more global connections, so I clicked on the link. Having heard a lot about Flipgrid recently but not really being sure of what it was, I decided to give this one a go and changed up my reading plan last minute to read the book (by watching the video below) and having my learners respond to it.

To be honest, while I really liked the book and its message, I was a bit confused as to what my learners were meant to do. Being in New Zealand, we had started looking at this on Monday, which is Sunday in the US, so there had not yet been any entries to the flipgrid yet. So we bumbled about what we were doing for a few days. I had the children make a picture about how they would make their mark in the world. What was interesting was that even though I didn't really give them that great instructions, they all interpreted differently and had some really interesting things to say:

The actual use of Flipgrid was interesting. Essentially there was an online board setup where anyone could post videos (though many of the other videos had a lot of filters on them, which didn't really seem useful) and respond to the videos with videos of their own. My impression beforehand was that this was a tool for flipping a classroom, but obviously the potential of this is far beyond that. Some of my learners did receive some feedback from others and while it wasn't necessarily very deep, it was interesting to see them connect with others around the globe. I like this idea and perhaps I can use it with some upcoming projects I'm trying to plan with some schools overseas. It definitely has the potential to help learners connect with each other.

It is not a completely free resource (though it does have a free version), so I have to do some checking to see if I can get by with the free version, but certainly it is something worth checking out. Global Collaboration, on the other hand, is something I definitely recommend!

Maori Language Week 2017

This week was Maori Language Week in New Zealand. Though I have always tried my best to learn about all things Maori since I've lived in New Zealand, this year I have been lucky enough to be teaching with Bev Aerenga who has helped me expand my horizons and I felt like I've been able to contribute in a lot of ways this year. 

The first thing I did this week was help put a spotlight on some successful Maori citizens. As a Canadian who has not only lived in a multicultural society most of my life but who also went through teacher training there, where a main focus was on multiculturalism, I sometimes felt that ethnicities were reduced to songs, dances, music and food. I wanted to highlight some Maori people who had had success outside of these areas. So we each chose a person and made a short slide to highlight them each day. To be honest, I like the concept, though I'm not so sure my execution was great. Yes, we did share some people, but I'm not entirely sure the concept sunk it. It will give me some more thoughts for next year - though again, hopefully one does not wait a whole year to highlight successful Maori people. Here are the slides that we created for our learners:

Another thing that our habitat did (admittedly, I was not the driving force behind this, but I did support) was prepare a waiata for the whole school Waiata Sing Off. Our learners worked so hard to learn the words and the actions. I may be biased, but I think they were the best habitat at the sing-off. Here's what they did:

The third and fourth things we did this week involved me making some digital resources. Our school had our termly Curious Community Day, so I created a couple of Kahoot! quizzes (unfortunately, you can't really embed or share them, but if you look for my user name, mrdavidson, you'll find the two I made) as well as a digital breakout. I love using breakout and this was a chance for me to make my own. I thought the clues were quite simple and straightforward, but clearly they were difficult. Most of the learners at Ormiston who tried the breakout gave up before they even solved one clue. I do know, however, that after sharing this with the New Zealand Primary Teachers' Facebook group, that several other schools did attempt it and some were even successful.

Woohoo we broke out! Thanks for the #Breakout Thank you @michaelteacher #MaoriLanguageWeek pic.twitter.com/vAHXbPkPNl

— Matai_AkaAka (@matai_akaaka) September 13, 2017

If you want to have a look at it, the picture below links to the breakout. I won't give any clues, so you'll have to try it for yourself. But I can say that you don't need anything but what's there to figure it out. 

I actually had a lot of fun making this breakout (and the Kahoot! quizzes). My plan now is to work on another breakout (I've actually already started it) on New Zealand elections and the electoral system, so hopefully I can get that done in time for the run-up to the upcoming election. Probably best to check my twitter if you want to see that one...

It's definitely been a good week for me in that I've become a lot more comfortable with teaching these things and creating resources. I can attribute that to having a nurturing and helpful semi-mentor working alongside me in my habitat. So thanks Bev! And I'm looking forward to continuing this journey.

Fourth Time's a Charm, or I'm a Google Certified Innovator

Three times before I have applied for the Google Innovator Academy and three times I have received the rejection email with varying degrees of dismay. But each time I refused to give up, knowing that if I kept at it, I would be selected. That being said, I was still quite nervous for this current round, since it was in my part of the world.

I was not to be dismayed this time. While on vacation in New York City, I had a flurry of activity on my phone, which all indicated that I had been accepted. I was extremely busy at the time so it took a while for everything to sink it. After my holiday, I came back to a very busy school term, so was also quite rushed for time.  That being said, I still managed to get everything done in time for the academy, which was probably one of the best experiences I've ever had.

If I had to choose what my favourite part of the two and a half days, I'd have a real problem. Pretty much all of it was incredible. The best I can do is point out two aspects of the academy that will likely be instrumental in going forward: The connections with other innovative educators around the globe and the design thinking process.

With me at the academy were 36 other educators, and many coaches and other EdTech experts. My close team, the Lucky Unkos made immediate and strong bonds with each other, and functioned not only as a well-oiled machine in all the activities we did, but also ended up winning quite a few things (or coming close seconds). By going through the process together, we formed something of a family group together and will now have each other to lean on through difficult times. One of my good online (and in person) colleagues was actually placed in this group, so it was nice to have that, but it was also nice to work closely with others in this capacity.

The whole point of the academy was to help each of us work on an identified problem in education and to develop a solution to it through the design process. Though I had had some experience with this, clearly I didn't know enough, because over the 2 and a half days I was immersed into the world of design thinking in a way that I could never have imagined. We started from the beginning by looking at all of the reasons why the problem exists and then examining the person (or people) to whom our solution is directed at. We spent lots of time slowly developing our ideas and giving each other feedback. Eventually we all developed a prototype of what our solution will be.

This process was absolutely amazing and I've already brought in many of the ideas into my practice. In our iExplore block, I've taken four of my groups and run through a watered down (but still pretty robust) version of this with the projects they had been working on.  Already the results have been pretty positive with all four groups working on some pretty interesting solutions (so watch this space in the coming weeks when I'll have time to share what they did in more depth).

My actual project is based on helping educators integrate coding into the curriculum. Here in New Zealand, computational thinking is meant to be part of the curriculum next year. Before the academy I did a survey and found that many educators were not teaching it (about 50%) and those that were had had very little training or support. So I wanted to change that. After the whole process at the academy, I decided on making a storyboard of a video for my prototype. I'm currently in the process of turning that storyboard into a script which will then be filmed. It has been a busy few weeks since I came back (mostly taken up with ERO and some big personal things), so I'm hopefully going to find some time in the coming week to work on it. At any rate, I was matched with my mentor today, so that's another great step in this whole process. I look forward to sharing with everyone how this project is going in the future!