Check out four posts in Anne Berland’s Blog:

https://annejaneb.opened.ca/category/edtech/edtech-inquiry/

Google maps is a useful tool for finding location information, planning routes, getting directions, see photos and reviews, traffic reports, drop a pin

• • Students can make their own maps – Google: My Maps
    • Points, lines, shapes
    • Attach media
    • Calculate routes, perimeters, areas
    • Layers!
    • Share the map to collaborate
    • Colour icons by value
    • Change the base map
• Lesson/project ideas
  • Points of interest map
  • Student commentary
  • Family heritage map
  • Map languages
  • Class information
  • Fictional settings for novel making
  • Field trips or imaginary trips

• Google Street View
  • Not just streets
  • Cultural, political, physical geography
  • Google cultural institute
  • Museums, natural wonders, architecture
  • Art, curricular content, historical documents, deep dives

• What’s the difference google map vs google earth…
  • • Google earth is for exploring (experience over theory)
    • Find your house and get up close with street view
    • Flight simulator
    • View the past – imagery from the past to compare to present day
    • View layers
    • Google moon mars, and sky
    • Voyageur – Jane goodall, sesame workshop, nasa, interactive lesson plans
    • Can see endangered habitats
    • “I’m feeling lucky” button
    • You can view from telescopes, look at mars, moon, apollo missions
• 20 questions warm up exercise, compass directions, grass lands, conversations, explore different environments, scavenger hunt with co-ordinates
• Idea: Grade 4 cross-curricular project
  • Gold rush, follow main characters and figure out where they went on a map
  • Visiting specific sites along the way
  • Add journal entries, notes can be done on the map, measure distances with walking or a car
  • Put custom icons in

Privacy on Google maps and Google earth – scary or awesome

• Click on time line – it keeps track of where you go and depending on your settings it may upload your photos
• Corporations upload your information – beware!!

Keiro gave a great talk on stop motion animation and how you can use this in education…

• • She showed an example of teacher using stop motion using only post it notes with students
  • Stop motion on apple products or animating in Photoshop
  • Twining button in Photoshop to move to photos towards each other
  • Resources:
    • Makerspaceforeducation.com
    • iste.org
    • onf-nfb.gc.ca
    • blog.ed.ted.com
    • wiobyrne.com
    • Sites.google.com/site/waldportfolio
    • Education.microsoft.com
    • www.youtube.com
    • https://giphy.com/

Heidi James – teacher from Colquitz Middle School 

Minecraft EDU

• • popular with kids
  • DANTDM – YouTube
  • Kids exchanging IP addresses instead of phone numbers, collaborating beyond the school
  • resource link for minecraft – look at slides

Benifits of Minecraft:

• team building
• critical thinking
• problem solving
• solving problems for classmates – students can sometimes answer questions faster than teacher

• purpose of Minecraft is to build things – crafting tables, building amazing things together, figuring out how to craft tools, called crafting recipe,
• crafting recipe has to be done in a certain way, giving some of the items, but not giving everything away
• community building – everyone had to work together
• learn about agriculture, find seeds, know how to tend to them, learn how to care for your animals, dig a pit or build a fence,
• characters sleep, must build a bed and a safe place, prioritize where you sleep, that is where you spawn when you die
• Student BIOMs, give students specific jobs,
• teaching students 3-d x/y ordered grids, learning from, math, social studies core competences all at the same time
• tutorial – leads you through until you get better, towards the end of the tutorial world you can learn to fly and make tools
• kids can learn about machines, pullies, building, science topics
• has environmental concerns built into the program, and environmental options – can plant a bunch of trees together and you can create a house
• not anit-social – it is okay if the teacher doesn’t know how to do anything on it except how to launch as they will figure it out, ask the students to help each other
• tap into student voice
• Students are god in minecraft
• great to see Grade 8 students take the lead in teaching us in our PDPP program
• Mindplex – mini games, separate servers online, separate from the school server
• Highpixel – mini games, painting on wool,
• for assessment – stop and listen, take a clip board around the room, language of the core competences, oral, formative observation, and detailed reflection about core competences, justify, explain struggles and experience with formative assessment, stop and listen, see if the kids are engaged,
• The kids that are quiet in math, trying so hard, writing things down – can open up and be very vocal in minecrafting strategies
• Creative or survivor; in survivor you can die… everyone starts with nothing except for the leader, pick axe and..
• you can be killed by monsters, skeletons, spiders,
• may have to mute as it slows the server down
• Teacher control – can control all settings, whether kids can talk, kill each other etc…
• Keep inventory – when you die you can keep your stuff
• teacher can gift students gift… food, tools,
• turtles – green square robot that can build things….

Rebecca and her kindergarten class…

Today we had the opportunity to visit Rebecca Bathurst Hunt in her French immersion classroom for kindergarten.  Her approach is unique in that she teaches students through inquiry.  Rebecca was able to explain the process of inquiry and how she scaffolds her learners so that they can empower their own interests and skills as much as possible within the curriculum.  She encourages the students to learn through play as much as possible, with some guidance along the way.  Often she uses books to help the students connect to what she is trying to teach.   Inquiry in the beginning is very structured and teacher driven, but eventually as students become more comfortable with the inquiry process they can be given more freedom.  Rebecca stressed the importance of having a good base in literacy and numeracy in the beginning, especially in kindergarten.

Here is a link that provides some of the tools for inquiry Rebecca put together for us:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14zVpNlMaEdpj1gjaRWLzdGTbPXBjRg-tRJopAsIlWyE/edit

I really like the idea of kindness ninjas.  Her teacher friend sent the class a top secret box with supplies for the students to become secret kindness ninjas, which included ninja bandannas and other ninja supplies .  A book that is essential for this idea is: “Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed”  Here is an instagram to get ideas from of her teacher friend that started kindness ninjas: #kindnessninjas

Another idea presented today was using Giph or Bomerangs – but be careful to not to let students look them up as some of the are not appropriate for kids: https://giphy.com/

Questions that Rebecca’s asks her students during the inquiry process:

What do you see?

What do you know?

What do you wonder?

Remember that it took her eight years to get to where she is at now!

http://rebeccabathursthunt.com/

Class Discussion of Jesse Miller

• Great speaker, educational, interesting, but also created anxiety
• Challenging to consider photos that other people take of us and where they might end up with social media
• Kids must be so careful starting Facebook and Youtube video as it follows you everywhere in your life; it’s easy to lose control when you forget your passwords
• Beware of how technology is being used with facial recognition
• Question the larger implications of facial recognition programs – the information is collected for  for future projects
• Consider where your photos are being stored – like on Icloud which does not have the privacy security as it is in the states, Canada has better security
• Think about children and consent with photography – are children really aware of what they are consenting to?

Jeff Hopkins and PSII

• The first few weeks is asking what inquiry is, exploring what this is…
• Book recommended: Diving into Inquiry by Trevor Mackenzie
• Look at inquiry as an opportunity – we get to choose what we are interested in – Indigenous way of teaching lines up with Inquiry process
• Inquiry is starting a process and shouldn’t end when the course is over

Working with graphics

• Using power point instead of photoshop
• Photoshop and illustrator are universal but cost, not really accessible, need a license
• Software listed on slides of options for vector or jpeg; https://edtechuvic.ca/edci336/category/michael/
• Freeware – software asks you to pay when you get to a certain point
• Power point – good alternative to photoshop or Gimphoto
• pixlr – photoshop tool in the browser
• #MakeSlidesFunAgain

Power Point

• Right click – to make into a jpeg, export as a picture
• Save as gives many options for saving such as jpegs, not just slides
• Double click on photo – borders, rounded, artistic effects, can put text on it, crop it, basic things you can do really quickly, make images more interesting
• Shape tool to create logo – vector tool – maybe get your learners to make a logo
• Highlight shapes – right click – save as image
• Smart art – import shapes – quick ways to create graphics
• Creative commons image – brought in and put shapes over the top to reflect ways to engage learners

Sample Image worked on in power point below (pencil crayon image: Photo by Kelli Tungay on Unsplash):

Don’t Forget the Power of a Screen shot!

• MAC Shift command-4
• Windows use snipping tool
• IOS hold volume down and power button
• Iphone screen shot

Photo Aps

• Prisma – freeware – then have to pay to have high quality
• Mirror Lab
• 8Bit Photo
• Comica – learning plans – use for students to make text or literacy, make panels, in comica or power point
• Inspiraton and tools from Bryan Mathers .com – commonsense media – check out the fabulous mixer machine – #artwork
• www.bryanmmathers.com

What a great experience we had today learning about the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry.  Jeff Hopkins, the founder, principle and teacher of the school gave us a glimpse of what the school is about and how they help students generate questions for good, deep inquiry that becomes the foundation of the student’s curriculum.  The students meet all the requirements expected of any high school student in BC, but they do it on their own terms with their own interests.     This is the 7th year that the school has been open and Jeff explained how successful this type of learning can be by giving examples of what the students have been creating.  He told how one student has produced and published a novel and how another has produced research  about brain activity and ballet dancing while using either point or flat shoes, which will be published.  Another student is learning math and physics by incorporating  different formulas into a video game that he is making.  The school is very accommodating and can work with students and their busy schedules.  For example, if a student is heavily into dance, they can incorporate this into their curriculum.  This flexibility allows grade 11 and 12 students to explore first year courses at UVic and use these credits toward their grade 12 and for furthering their education in university.   While the students are taking courses at UVic, the teachers at PSII are there to help and support their learning in university classes that do not use the inquiry based method that this school provides.

As I become more educated about inquiry I begin to question the education system that spoon feeds information to students.  I think that eventually all schools will adapt some form of inquiry as it seems to be the way of the future.  It is inspiring to see the opportunities that the students at PSII are creating for themselves through deep inquiry.