Thursday 24 November 2011

Out First Connected Gathering




 
Each year, ECC students get together three times for face to face gatherings. We meet once at each community, and this is an important time for students to meet and socialize to extend their online relationships.
Out first gathering of the year was hosted by the ECC students and Mrs.Mulholland at Ashcroft Elementary. We met at their school, and then we all travelled together to a local pumpkin patch. Students had a blast meeting their peers from other schools, and the bus ride home was buzzing with excitement. The initial shyness wore off quickly, and students talked about their new friends and the pumpkin patch experience for weeks to come!
The kids are thrilled to visit Ms.Gregory and her class at Cayoosh in January!

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Thoughts from students

I'm inviting our ECC students to weigh in with their opinions.

What do you like best about Connected Classrooms?
How is it different from other classrooms you've been in?

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Moodle


Today, we worked on a lesson to deepen our moodle responses. While we've found a high level of engagement for our moodle site, we are always working to improve the quality and depth of student responses.

Since September, students have been working on weekly moodle forums as a component of ECC. Each week, a new deep thinking question is posed in the following forums: Current Events, Reading Power, Photography and Math.

Today students explored a video prompt and sculpted a response to post on moodle. This year, we are doing our best to provide more talk time prior to moodle posts, so hopefully we see deeper responses.

In addition to the weekly forums, students also participate in Online Literature Circles every week on moodle. Students choose from a variety of books within our theme(this year, it's survival). They join an online conversation on moodle once a week within their book's forum, which is moderated by a teacher. For the first set of books in our theme, each teacher took three books. We begin Lit Circles with book talk week(the best week of the year!). Each teacher sells the book they have chosen, and then they lead a weekly forum on that book, posing a deep thinking question each week. It feels like Christmas when kids see the new book bins arriving!We also have the option of listening to many of the Literature Circle books on class ipods, and this has made more challenging reads accessible to a variety of learners.

Saturday 12 November 2011

Day to Day in ECC

Each classroom in the project is equipped with:

-       videoconferencing equipment

-       smart board

-       wireless microphone for school-to-school sharing

-       class set of net books

-       class set of headphones

-       at least three digital cameras

Students engage in four teacher-facilitated videoconferencing lessons a week based on the teacher’s area of expertise and passion. Students participate daily on a shared moodle site; they engage in online literature circles, weekly forums (current events, math logic, reading power deep thinking questions) and collaborate on a year-long inquiry project.

One of the biggest successes of the project has been the increase of motivation and joy of reading that result from several sets of online literature circles throughout they year. The project has ensured that adequate resources exist to compile a rich variety of texts available at each site for these literature circles ranging from novels, picture book, non-fiction, and Aboriginal content to reach a variety of readers. Struggling readers at sites have the opportunity to have audio books purchased when the text appeals to them but is beyond their reading level.

Students, over the course of the year, learn to navigate digital software and learn to create a variety of multimedia content for the purposes of collaboration, sharing across sites,  and demonstrations of learning.

The physical environment varies from class to class, yet all students sit in partners and groups to encourage collaboration. Student generally spread about the classroom and find spaces where they work best during independent practice time. The classrooms have a variety of pillows, student centers, and spaces to accommodate where they best work.

The Team

Elementary Connected Classrooms receives support at a variety of levels within the school district. The current impetus is driven by three core classrooms teachers.

Core Classroom Teacher: Brooke Haller, Lytton Elementary School

Core Classroom Teacher: Aislinn Mulholland, Ashcroft Elementary School


Core Classroom Teacher: Errin Gregory, Cayoosh Elementary School


The three core teachers come from a variety of educational backgrounds and teach based on their expertise and passions. Expertise ranges from children’s literature, technology fostering active citizenship, global education, fine arts, to writing. Teachers collaborate in three to four face-to- face collaboration days yearly, monthly videoconferencing meetings, and daily email communication. While teachers lie at the core of the project, its success has depended on strong and continued support from school and district administrators.

Our Learners

The project focuses on students in grades 4-7, ranging in age from 9-13. Three classrooms are involved: two are grade 4/5 classrooms, and the third is a grade 6/7 classroom. Over half of the students within the project are of Aboriginal Nations ancestry. All of the students who would normally be in any of the teacher’s classrooms are involved, and the project hopes to eventually expand to make the Connected Classrooms experience available to all elementary schools within our school district.
The three classrooms in the project are highly intertwined, despite each school being roughly an hour’s drive apart from the other; videoconferencing and online programs are working to geographical boundaries. Elementary Connected Classrooms is one of many iniatives within our district designed to meet the needs of declining enrolment and rural isolation through technology and instructions; models exist within secondary schools as well. This year, there is also an English 8 connected classrooms that links secondary classrooms in English 8, as well as a variety of shared learning initiatives at the secondary level.

Thursday 10 November 2011

Project Goals

- To enhance digital literacy and ability of students to collaborate through the seamless use of transformative technology.

 - To create project-based learning experiences which are interdisciplinary in nature and promote collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking.

 - To build cross-cultural understanding between communities within our school district by creating new partnerships and linking learners in Connected Classrooms. The project seeks to build understanding between the different Aboriginal nations within our district and non-Aborginal students with diverse backgrounds.

- to share good teaching practice and engage in authentic teacher collaboration


Our Research Question for the Growing Innovations Project

This is where we started with our original question, though we've already discussed a slight departure:


How can the Connected Classrooms project broaden the learning community of our students and foster collaboration between geographically distant students by creating new learning partnerships both within and outside of our district?

We're thinking of re-sculpting into two directions; one that considers impact on students/communities and one that considers how the project has shifted pedagogy and practice for the teachers within the team.

Technokidz

Collaboration lies at the core of the project.  The three classrooms in the project are highly intertwined, despite each school being roughly an hour’s drive apart from the others; videoconferencing and online communication mediums are working to dissolve geographical boundaries. Connected Classrooms is one of many initiatives within our district designed to meet the needs of declining enrolment, limited student peer groups and rural isolation through collaborative technology and instruction. The project also respects that the interactive nature of our knowledge-based world requires the ability to collaborate and that innovation requires people to interact in a variety of ways, including through interactive technologies and project-based experiences.

The project has created a community of learners amongst the students and teachers. The learning is organized by core teachers who collaborate and plan with each on a daily, weekly and month basis; teachers model the collaborative process they promote within students. The nature of the videoconferences is highly collaborative; students engage in many project-based activities that are constructivist and require cooperation with classmates, creativity and critical thinking. Learners and teacher- facilitators interact through videoconference interactions, sharing smart board work via Brigit, and engaging in online forums and chat rooms together.  Moodle has become a powerful communication and sharing tool; students frequently message each other and their teachers, and engage deeply in discussion forums. Participants also communicate by sharing a variety of multimedia content created by students and facilitators at each site.

What is Connected Classrooms?

The Connected Classrooms project is an intentional departure from the traditional approach to education in its approach to technology and instruction and has been a successful pilot project in its district. This project exists in two different settings: Elementary Connect Classrooms and English 8 Connected Classrooms. The Elementary Connected Classrooms project is comprised of three elementary classrooms with students from grades 4-7 students in the communities of Lytton, Ashcroft and Lillooet. At the secondary level, the English 8 Connected Classrooms project links English 8 classrooms in the communities of Clinton, Lillooet, Ashcroft and Lytton.  In each project, the teachers and students collaborate to combine their classrooms via daily videoconferencing, online collaborative work, and by creating a variety of multimedia content.

Collaboration and Technology

This blog is dedicated to following the progress and development of the Elementary Connected Classrooms Project in School District 74. As we become a "Growing Innovation", we seek to critically reflect on our impact on students and teaching practice within our district. We are thankful for the support of the Ministry and the University of BC in the Growing Innovations Project as we evolve.

This page will serve as an open discussion and presentation of the many of things happening within the project!