Playing in the Sandbox

Showing posts with label edhackcamp. Show all posts

iBooks Author Hackathon-- #Macul13 reflection pt. 3

By Unknown | Published Tuesday, April 9, 2013

bit.ly/ibahack

This was the event I was waiting for at #Macul13. Finally a chance for Steve Dickie (@falconphysics) and I (@anthonydilaura) to tell a wider audience about a large scale cooperative project that will bring educators together to create high quality, interactive content using iBooks Author.

This hour long presentation was an absolute high for me. This is where my passion lies: collaborating with highly motivated, creative educators to create and share digital content that will undoubtedly innovate the way iPad classrooms will function.

Working with Steve and co-presenting this project with him felt like we had been working with one another for years even though it was only our second time of being in the same room. Steve is an incredibly brilliant science teacher that approaches teaching and learning from a very artistic angle. What he brings to this project and to those hacking science content is invaluable.

About the Project

Here is a brief overview of the project as we described it to our audience. For further information see my article that was published at Edudemic.com on March 28th, 2013 and check out the projects website here.

What: Multiple two-day events that bring teachers together to learn how to author content using iBooks Author. Collaborate in content area or grade level teams to divide up and conquer common core aligned granular size learning modules that are shared among teachers.

Who: Motivated and creative teachers working in an iPad learning environment as they will most directly benefit from these resources.

Why: There are literally 100's of reasons perhaps 1000's if you consider the amount of money a district can save and redistribute to support student learning by having teachers create and use these "digital textbooks." But first and foremost is the reason of student learning. What I have experienced and what research backs is that when a curriculum is more personalized and tailored to differentiate for student needs they are more likely to succeed and own the learning. Content delivered in this manner allows the teacher to re-purpose their face to face time. It allows class time to be spent on a deeper exploration and transfer of content.

Why this is so exciting?

It's not that this technology is so amazing and new that gets me giddy. Rather, it is the idea of accomplishing this task together, collaborating and sharing with a group of like minded teachers. Let's face it that doesn't always happen in our building, department, grade level groups.

I don't look at this technology as something so innovative that it will blow our doors off. However, I do believe the results of this project are something that could allow teachers to innovate their classroom practices in a way that blows the doors off their student's learning. That, to me, is very exciting.

I want to learn. I want to share what I know. Doesn't everyone want professional development to be like this? Learn from others and share what you know put them together to advance education. However, how often do we sit and humbly (or selfishly) remain quiet in department meetings? Or how often do we as teachers not have the buy in for what our PD is about?

This event will be teacher driven and grassroots. It's not an order coming down from the administrators (at least not yet- ours is thinking about telling departments "no more textbooks"). It will call upon the creativity of many, it will deepen the creativity of many, and it has the potential to deepen the creativity of students.

Posted in edhackcamp, Hackathon, iBooks Author, iPad, Macul, textbook | Leave a comment

Why #Edcamps are great but I want #Edhackcamps instead.

By Unknown | Published Sunday, February 24, 2013

First of all if you have never been to an #Edcamp it is an absolute must. Passionate educators from all levels, tech directors, administrators, ISD folks, and of course awesome raffle prizes and food...all for free. I believe the popular saying goes something like "Edcamp-the way professional development should be done."

Here is a typical edcamp success story from this weekend. Middle school teacher Tara Maynard (@tmaynard5) invites a colleague Ben Hondorp to attend. Ben shows up and in the first 15 minutes creates a twitter account (@benhondorp). Ben starts tweeting, following, reading others posts and links, his PLN doors have just been blown wide open- success #1. Ben attends sections and hears about flipped learning, web 2.0 tools, and projects that he can get involved in to better his teaching and learning environment- success #2. Amongst his colleagues sits his tech coach (me) who is right there to catch his quotes like "I want to try flipping my class" or "I want to start using Flubaroo and Google forms to administer quizzes." Now I can follow up with Ben in the coming weeks and say "Hey, I remember you wanted to start working on integrating Google forms, how about I come over to your classroom this week and help you get started?" -success #3.

I think this third success is so important because so often we hear about great apps and integration techniques but when Monday roles around Saturday seems like a distant memory that holds very little attainable classroom reality unless there is someone to follow up on it with you. Again, this is how professional development should be done.

Undoubtedly this is great and truly the purpose of edcamp. However, I also looked around the room and wondered to myself at what point do we need to switch gears from the learning side of edcamp to the collaborating and creating side of #Edhackcamp? What if our time together wasn't just allocated to learning about new digital technologies but rather was aimed at creating shareable digital content that would mutually benefit the people in the room? What if, instead of offering to teach others about LMS's or online assessments we instead spent time helping teachers establish their current classrooms for the use of these things? What if, instead of trying to gulp down the ocean of information being offered at edcamp every hour, teachers could elect to work for the morning to understand and implement just one integration tool or strategy?

The way I see it, it's kind of like PBL for teachers. In project based learning we set our students loose to learn and create the end product (this is not the formal definition of pbl but you get what I mean?) Of course there is going to be learning along the way, they will need to ask questions, research techniques, Youtube a few tutorials etc. But the point is that there is a very purposeful direction of this time.

For example, what if on the board it read something like this: Morning: Build a class website, Build a class Moodle, Build a Class Wiki, etc. These sessions could be facilitated by people with experience in creating in these different platforms and the goal would be to have a product usable on Monday. Afternoon sessions could read: Create a Project Based Learning Unit, Create Online Assessment questions, Create System for Digital Portfolios, Create a digital textbook. Again, here the focus would be on walking away with a product or project that is immediately usable.

Obviously there are huge gains for novice and expert tech users in taking this approach. Again it is learner centered- focusing on the direct needs/desires of the person. It is collaborative in nature and to me that is the best part. When teachers get together and share, not only knowledge, but the creation of digital content this can be a very powerful transforming agent in classrooms today.

Next year- EDHACKCAMP!