OUR STORY

ISTE 2018 - CHICAGO

I can not begin to express how much the experience of attending and presenting at ISTE 2018 was! I put forth a proposal to share a promising idea in education. I shared how I used project/problem-based learning and inquiry to develop a real-life, authentic solution to a problem using Arduino hardware and coding. Here is my presentation and the template I used in my class.

RECORDING STUDIO IN ACTION

June 2018: Collaborating with other teachers has been so beneficial to me this year and a complete game changer. As soon as we had the space to hold more than one class I was collaborating with multiple teachers! When you bring together the expertise of multiple teachers, good things happen! It creates more of an interdisciplinary environment where students become interested in what "the other" students are doing and more questions are generated! We combined my video class and Mr. Hebert's senior music class to set up and multi-track their year end recordings. It took about four days to set up and we were able to squeeze in a couple of days of recordings. There never seems to be enough time to do everything you imagine doing but it was a great experience for all of the students involved.

Shakespeare Festival Collaboration Project

May 2018: Using our new space, another teacher and I joined forces to collaborate on a learning project. Her grade 10 English students teamed up with my grade 9 Business students to create DIGITAL BREAKOUT EDU games. You can view the Google Site we made to showcase this project here: https://sites.google.com/niagaracatholic.ca/shakespeare-ilftllp/home

INNOVATION AND GLOBAL COMPETENCIES

November 17 2017: For today's PD Day, only half of our staff were present as many departments were attending sessions at other locations. I had the opportunity to talk about innovation and 21st century global competencies. During this session teachers were all given Chromebooks. For those that had never used a Chromebook before, they learned how to log in and every teacher was able to try out the tools I spoke about in the session. In the afternoon we split up into two groups. One group continued to work on Google G Suite applications such as Classroom, Docs, Slides, etc. and the other group got a sneek peek at the SMART Learning Suite online for which our board just purchased a license for the next three years. I am really looking forward to exploring the SMART Learning Suite during second semester along with our new 75" Series 7 SMART Board!!!

PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY @ LCHS

Throughout Semester One - September - December 2017: One of our initiatives in this project is to share what we have learned through this TLLP with others including our school staff, the school board and the province. We created a PLC where we meet 1-2 times a month for a training session on some aspect of #edtech. This semester we have chosen to focus on G Suite and some Web 2.0 applications.

GOOGLE INspired PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAY

October 6 2017: We were asked if we would like to run some Google Sessions on our first PD Day of the year. Of course we said YES! We recruited a couple other teachers who have dived right into Google Classroom and they ran the Beginner session: Google from Scratch - Classroom & Docs basics. We received great feedback from this session because it gave teachers a chance to start using Classroom as a collaboration and communication tool. These are two out of the six 21c competencies that we are striving to develop with students. I fascilitated the second session: Learner-centered lesson plans with HyperDocs. I fell in love with using HyperDocs to guide my students through lessons empowering them to use technology as a tool and to be able to learn at their own pace which freed me up to work with the students who really need my help. The third session was run by my tllp parnter: Testing and Grading using Google Forms & Flubaroo. All three of these workshops were hands-on in labs or using Chromebooks. Teachers were able to work through the session and walk away at the end of the session with experience.

A BLANK CANVAS

September 2017: This is going to be an amazing collaborative learning space for students and teachers alike! We embark on this amazing project with sun kissed cheeks and refreshed minds. The room with the pink carpet (lol) is going to be the studio where students will be able to record music or podcasts, the blue wall area will be used for green screen work and we've removed the wall of grey cabinets to make room for a collaborative writing space which will hold two long whiteboards. We are looking forward to getting new tables in the collaborative area where students will be able work with the chromebooks and also new tables and the room rewired to accomodate the already existing 24 desktop computers. Here we go!

the promise of a 21st century lab

July 11 2017: Although not directly connected to my TLLP, my colleagues and I have embarked on a mission to re-imagine a new learning space for students at my school. In our free time this summer we are transforming an underutilized classroom into a 21st century learning lab where arts and technology classes will be able to collaborate. There will be an separate area that will house a recording studio, a large space with a lighting grid, backdrops and a green screen, audio recording rooms as well as a new storage room to safely store equipment. This lab will utilize the 24 personal computers that were already in the space but with the TLLP grant money we will be adding 25 mobile Chromebooks, an LCD 7000 series 75" mobile SMART board and a SMART document camera. [Insert super huge smile here because next year is going to be fun!] This lab will also become the hub of learning for my school's Professional Learning Community. It is my hope that we will inspire more teachers to investigate the ways in which they can integrate technology meaningfully into their classrooms through our sharing sessions.

“We want schools … where students will feel free to dream about their futures, where they are able to connect their passions with possible career options, and where the opportunities and resources needed to support these decisions are provided. ”

– Minister’s Student Advisory Council Representatives

Achieving Excellence A Renewed Vision for Education in Ontario

"Get Your Head Out of Your Apps" Technology Conference

April 28/29 2017: OECTA held it's first technology conference called "Get Your Head Out of Your Apps" #GYHOOYA17 where teachers, consultants, reps from Teach Ontario, TVO and OECTA Provincial all came together for an amazing weekend of PD. I was lucky to be selected to attend!!! I learned a lot and gathered even more resources to use as part of my project. I was encouraged by speaking with other teachers who feel the same way I do. The topic that continued to arise about technology in the classroom revolved around not having enough time. This weekend of PD was the time I needed for me to continue to reflect on exactly what I am going to do during this TLLP.

Additionally, I am always encouraging my students to "create and share" so I created two #sketchnotes of the keynote speeches and shared them via twitter. It was fun to see others commenting on them and retweeting them. I might just do this at every conference I attend from now on.

I created an educational twitter account too! I can be found at @DWilliamsTeach

Google Summit - Kitchener

April 8/9 2017: I attended the Google Summit in Kitchener, ON and loved every minute of it!!! Attending six sessions plus multiple keynote speakers, I started to gather resources and realized that my sphere of knowledge of everything google is more limited than I initially thought. Here comes the learning curve. I picked up the following books to help me get started:

“Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life.” – Helen Exley

Application for a TLLP Project

November 2016: I'm halfway through my teaching career and seemingly all of a sudden three things have happened that has prompted me to pursue this TLLP project. 1) Our school board has gone "Google Everything" and I'm very interested in how it can help my students to learn better and I to teach more effectively. 2) Teachers are excited about "new" technology available to them (chromebooks/GAFE/SMART Technologies) but I have observed that most teacher's are simply substituting (SAMR) technology in place of paper and pencil tasks when they could be doing so much more if they only knew what and how. 3) Finally, I am convinced that teachers at my school, throughout my school board and beyond are ready for meaningful PD to improve our teaching because, let's face it, the students sitting in front of us today are different than the students from 15 years ago. Our students are no longer benefiting from traditional learning methods and need opportunities to grow and learn so that they are prepared to solve the problems of the future. Our current students are Generation Z students. They were born into a highly connected, technology rich world. Traditional methods might not be the best way to reach these students, so why not investigate what might be better for them using technology to bridge curriculum with 21st Century learning skills?