In School Planning Time: A Team Teaching Necessity

I have been very fortunate to be granted a significant amount of support to effectively teach in a 1:1 computing classroom. When I took on the 1:1 computer classroom challenge, I didn't realize just how necessary these supports are for delivering an effective learning program. However, as the year began, I realized just how critical a team approach is to effective 1:1 computing implementation. The core team consists of our division's digital learning consultant,(DLC) our school's differentiated instruction facilitor (DIF) and myself (the classroom teacher). During the first two weeks of school, the DLC played a prominent role in the classroom; instructing the students and myself how to use our classroom's wiki and how to use Moodle to access assignments in the different subject areas. Learning how to use Moodle to design instruction was foreign to me and for the first month, I was pretty overwhelmed. The DLC modelled the process for the first lesson and then, with guidance, I began creating my own lessons. At first I tried to create all of my lessons in all of the subject areas in Moodle which prooved to be a daunting and exhausting task. I decided to set a more reasonable goal of planning only the ELA units. The DIF has been an invaluable resource and has played a team teaching role in the preparation and the teaching of ELA. Along with scheduled after school planning time, the DIF and I have also been granted one afternoon a week, in school planning time, which has helped us create ELA units which authentically incorporate technology. This time is not only used for planning lessons that include a number of differentiation choices, but it is also time to create effective formative and summative assessments. Without this planning time I believe that the DIF would become a glorified EA when team teaching in the classroom.

The Document Camera: Wonderful Presentation Tool

I have discovered my newest favourite thing in the classroom... the document camera. Next to my mounted digital projector (a must in any 1:1 computing classroom) the document camera is quickly becoming a must have tool by both me and my students. Although we have only started using it two weeks ago, each day we are discovering new uses. The document camera has been used to display and analyze the text and focus on different text structures as a class. The drawing feature, where different text structures can be circled and highlighted is excellent for focusing students' attention. The document camera is also becoming invaluable as a presentation tool. Students are able to present hand made posters and diagrams to their grade 12 buddies using skype. The students are also finding it beneficial in math. Students use metacognition to explain their thinking to the class when they present how they solved a math problem. The ease at which the document camera can be used also needs to be noted. Setting it up for use takes moments. A substitute teacher even commented on how wonderful the document camera was during music class. He had asked a student to get an overhead and the student quickly responded that "you don't need an overhead, you need a document camera. Here let me show you." The substitute teacher was very impressed with the tool and the student.

Benefits of Online Collaboration Between Grades and Schools

My grade 5 class has had the opportunity to buddy with a grade 12 Biology class in the neighbouring town. The grade 12 class has access to a class set of netbooks so that the students have the opportunity to skype with their buddies and to journal with their buddy using a wiki on a regular basis. It has been a wonderful experience for the students to get to know another group of students who are a lot older and who, on the surface, do not share many apparent commonalities. Modelling was needed for both groups of students on how to use skype and how to journal effectively with someone you don't know. The students caught on very quickly to the technique of asking someone that you don't know questions that are open ended and that do not allow for a yes/no answer. To help structure the interaction of the two groups and to provide purpose for the students, we (grade 12 biology teacher and myself) met and linked outcomes between Biology 30 and grade 5 science. The students were working on a unit in plants and as a culminating activity the grade 5 students were to present photosynthesis in a digital format that could be presented during a skype session with the grade 12 students. I was amazed at the myriad of ways that the students came up with to effectively present the process of photosynthesis. Some of the ways were: a rap, drama, interview show, glogster poster, hand drawn poster and song. Each presentation show cased the students' multiple intelligence learning style well. Each morning we skyped for about 15 minutes where each grade 12 student had the opportunity of presenting a "Wonder Why?" based on biology and then 10 interesting biology trivia. The grade 5 students had the opportunity to ask questions based on the presentation. The grade 5 students took turns each day presenting on photosynthesis. The grade 12 students were expected to take notes and then had a quiz based on what they learned. The grade 12 teacher commented that the students in her class did very well on their photosynthesis quiz. It was fortunate that the grade 12 students were able to have access to netbooks over a six week period because it allowed for the connection between the students to be established. In fact, the power of the relationships created was very well illustrated when a student in my class who struggled in math mentioned to me that her grade 12 buddy (who is also female) commented that her favorite subject is math and how she wants to study to become a doctor. That comment from her grade 12 buddy affected my grade 5 student so much that she said that she didn't know that girls could be good at math and that she was going to try to concentrate during math and to do better. This side benefit of collaboration with an older student group is something that I didn't ever imagine happening.

E-portfolios: Beginning of a student's Academic Journey

November has been incredibly busy with report cards and student led conferences. I have done portfolios with my students in the past so that they could showcase their growth as learners. Because of the students' access to netbooks, I thought it would be worthwhile to create an e-portfolio that the students could add to as they progress through the grades. We decided to use Google docs to create the e-portfolios and I was amazed at how fast the students caught onto creating an organized online portfolio. Students were able to write about each piece of work that they selected and upload to the e-portfolio for viewing. They could also scan pieces of written work and then upload it. We didn't begin creating the e-portfolios until the third week in October which made it difficult for the students to be creative since the e-portfolios had to be completed by the beginning of November; in time for student led conferences. Although, I was apprehensive at first; not really knowing how student led conferences using e-portfolios would work, I was very pleased with the outcome. The classroom was set up into four stations. The students and parents started at a station with me where we could talk about how the year was going and any concerns the parents and students were having. After the brief discussion, the students invited their parent(s) to one of the stations that had a netbook. The students logged onto their e-portfolios and were able to present what they were doing. I was very impressed with the level of dialogue that was created between the parent and the child. The parents had a lot of questions and the students were able to answer the questions well. I was also impressed how the interviews flowed. Because of the stations and the students being in charge of the presentation, three groups could be presenting at one time. I became the facilitator who answered questions but remained on the sidelines, allowing the students to shine. At the end of the conference we gave the parents the opportunity to provide us with written feedback about their experience and thoughts about e-portfolios. From the comments, the parents were very pleased with the process and how excited the students were about their work. It was also interesting that parents were pleased to see that the students scanned some of their handwritten projects. It was apparent that some parents had difficulty letting go of the idea that learning can only take place using textbooks and looseleaf.