Over lunch today, I had an opportunity to speak with Ryan Bretag. Ryan is an instructional technology specialist and is the mind behind one of the most innovative learning spaces I've come across. The space is called 'The IDEA' and is located within Glenbrook North High School.
If you'd like to learn more about how this learning space came to be, our conversation has been posted as this week's episode on The Clever Sheep Podcast.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Happy Birthday Alec
Last week I got an invitation from Dean Shareski to participate in the construction of a crowd-sourced 40th birthday video for Alec Couros. If you know Alec, then you know that a collaborative project like this is the ideal way to honour such an effective connector-collaborator.
I can't help but smile at the performances of so many of my favourite tweeps. In merging over 70 video submissions from Alec's friends, Dean did a wonderful job. What viewers may not realize, is that Dean also did an amazing job at scaffolding the exercise for participants.
After gathering volunteers, Dean shared a link to the song, and matched participants to specific lyrics on a 'Thank You for Being a Friend' Google Doc. In stretching the limits of his DropBox account, Dean leveraged DropItToMe to gather clips; and goodness knows what he did from there!
Happy Birthday Alec!
&
Thank You Dean, for orchestrating such a celebratory production!
Happy Birthday Alec Couros from shareski on Vimeo.
I can't help but smile at the performances of so many of my favourite tweeps. In merging over 70 video submissions from Alec's friends, Dean did a wonderful job. What viewers may not realize, is that Dean also did an amazing job at scaffolding the exercise for participants.
After gathering volunteers, Dean shared a link to the song, and matched participants to specific lyrics on a 'Thank You for Being a Friend' Google Doc. In stretching the limits of his DropBox account, Dean leveraged DropItToMe to gather clips; and goodness knows what he did from there!
Happy Birthday Alec!
&
Thank You Dean, for orchestrating such a celebratory production!
Friday, February 11, 2011
Andy At the Apple Store
Yesterday afternoon, my colleague, Andy Forgrave and I set out from the OTF 21st Century Skills Conference, to visit a brick and mortar Apple Store. Our goal, was to write a children's book to document our trip. I think this is a nice model for how a slidedeck can be used to turn photos and blocks of text into an e-book.
After sharing the original slidedeck, I thought it would be interesting to invite text submissions for new versions. Almost immediately, this fresh take was contributed by Karen Littlewood
The set of photos that were used to create this 'book', are now available for download. If you or your students would like to remix 'Andy At the Apple Store', or if you take this idea and create an entirely new product, I'd love to learn about it...
Andy At the Apple Store
View more presentations from Rodd Lucier.
After sharing the original slidedeck, I thought it would be interesting to invite text submissions for new versions. Almost immediately, this fresh take was contributed by Karen Littlewood
One day Andy went to the mall
There was an apple on the wall
Andy wondered what’s inside
It was unlike any apple he’d ever spied
he felt like he was being led
then the glowing apple was on his head!
He thought and thought and thought some more
Then took a step inside the store
The store was like a tekkie fair
On the wall, a Macbook Air
Andy saw an iPhone 4
And a wall of programs in that store
Cords and cables far and near
Beautiful headphones so he could hear
Little shuffles in colours bold and bright
And free Internet, time to check some sites
Andy sat and played a while
That Mighty Mouse sure has some style!
The pics in the game made him stare
Then he got a sticker for playing fair
Andy looked at the man in blue
He knew he had one last thing to do
He could help the customers too!!
One last pic in the Apple store
We all know Andy will be back for MORE!!
The set of photos that were used to create this 'book', are now available for download. If you or your students would like to remix 'Andy At the Apple Store', or if you take this idea and create an entirely new product, I'd love to learn about it...
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
'Learning Spaces' of Tomorrow
This past Sunday, Zoe Branigan-Pipe and I had an opportunity to work with teachers at the Science Leadership Academy. Titling our workshop, 'Classrooms of Tomorrow', our intent was to lead teachers to design solutions based on what they'd learned at Educon. Ideally, groups were to develop ideas into plans that could be implemented as soon as... tomorrow.
Zoe and I had spoken many times about how we might capture the conversational spirit of Educon, and in the end, we decided to leverage LiveScribe smartpen technology to archive the conversations of on-site participants. We were also purposeful in engaging our online audience, who also collaborated in the design of a learning space using Scribblar.
A Few EduConversations
The pencasts below are interactive. If you click on a button that says 'plan' or 'conversation', you'll be able to hear the discussion that led up to each group's design solution. Otherwise, you can click on any element in a groups design, to hear their thinking about that particular element. Each group was asked to design a space in consideration of 3 big ideas; so click on any keyword if you'd like to hear the group's rationale or design focus.
Although we couldn't capture the audio, our remote group had a conversation that resulted in the design of this space:
In the end, the word 'classroom' proved to limit the thinking of some participants who struggled to think outside of that box. As a result, our conversation is now called 'Learning Spaces of Tomorrow'. Consider this post as the public presentation of the ideas of our participants. What jumps out at you?
Photo Credit: Andy Forgrave
Zoe and I had spoken many times about how we might capture the conversational spirit of Educon, and in the end, we decided to leverage LiveScribe smartpen technology to archive the conversations of on-site participants. We were also purposeful in engaging our online audience, who also collaborated in the design of a learning space using Scribblar. A Few EduConversations
The pencasts below are interactive. If you click on a button that says 'plan' or 'conversation', you'll be able to hear the discussion that led up to each group's design solution. Otherwise, you can click on any element in a groups design, to hear their thinking about that particular element. Each group was asked to design a space in consideration of 3 big ideas; so click on any keyword if you'd like to hear the group's rationale or design focus.
Although we couldn't capture the audio, our remote group had a conversation that resulted in the design of this space:
In the end, the word 'classroom' proved to limit the thinking of some participants who struggled to think outside of that box. As a result, our conversation is now called 'Learning Spaces of Tomorrow'. Consider this post as the public presentation of the ideas of our participants. What jumps out at you?
Photo Credit: Andy Forgrave
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
