9th Annual 21st Century Learning Conference

This presentation is about the digital storytelling teaching pedagogy among students who learn Chinese as a second language.

It is not rare to meet students who feel reluctant to speak or write. More often, students, especially those in the lower forms, are lack of motivation to acquire the words. However, students may not be that fond of drill speaking or writing, they are good at drawing, singing, dancing, running or acting. Therefore, teachers can use students' strength as a way to ignite students' learning passion. For example, they can use a digital cartoon poster to do a self-introduction, and students can choose other ways to present their images.

In this presentation, we will share resources in regards to digital storytelling. Then we will share teaching cases, including how to conduct demonstration, to design assessments and to offer effective feedback. Lastly we will reflect the challenges we have met and how we have solved these problems in teaching.

Most assessment carried out in schools delivers the teacher’s perspective of the student – what have they achieved? What should we expect of them? Only by looking at things from a student’s perspective can we understand what they feel capable of, and determine what learning and pastoral support they may need.

The Pupil Attitudes to Self and School (PASS) survey provides benchmarked data that can provide a fresh perspective from the whole-school down to the individual student: 

• Do your students feel that they have the toolkit they need to learn?
• Do you have a disengaged cohort?
• Is a lack of self-belief preventing some of your students from reaching their full potential?

Claire Dunn, GL Education’s International Manager, will explain how the reports answer this kind of question and look at some of the intervention strategies schools are putting in place to address these challenges.

Flipped classrooms and blended learning are instructional strategies that can be used to increase classroom interaction and feedback for greater depth in student learning and engagement. These instructional strategies intentionally shift instruction to a learner-centered model that redefines classroom activities with huge potential for personalized instruction and higher-order skills such as problem-finding, collaboration, and problem solving.

Teaching and leading with flipped classrooms and blended learning becomes exponentially more powerful with the strategic use of technology. In this workshop, participants will develop a strategic digital leadership mindset using the SAMR framework for reflecting on and planning how well they use technology to enhance learning.

After this initial self-assessment as a teacher or system leader, Amy Coupal will facilitate learning about how to use this framework to support technology integration and evaluate how technology enhances the learning experience, specifically supporting educators to:

• Use a common language for drawing out the specifics of purposeful use of digital tools in student engagement and achievement
• Assess and evaluate the technology used in classrooms
• Integrate a framework for shared understandings related to the life cycle of technology integration in schools
• Mentor and coach professional learning in schools and districts for accessing new opportunities for growth and resources

Are you interested in bringing coding into your classroom but just not sure where to start?

This introductory coding workshop is focused on helping you to see opportunities for its integration across various subject areas. As a mathematics teacher, I will show several examples of how I have used coding within my own classroom. In addition, I will provide some examples of possible student programming tasks that align with science, languages and art.

The level of prior knowledge required with programming is beginner to intermediate while the curricular examples will be aimed at grades 6 to 12. The coding examples will mainly use the Python programming language, with some examples using Scratch.

It is encouraged that participants bring their laptops if possible, as time permitting, we will end the session by coding a basic math program.

 

We all often feel overwhelmed by the pace of our world today. Many blame tech for this pace. In contrast we'd like to show you ways that technology can be used in your classroom to help teachers implement mindful moments in their classroom and empower their students to be more mindful.  

This presentation is about exploring ways to use technology in pursuit of balanced and healthy living for ourselves and our students.

You can find our presentation here.   

Over the last several years a paradigm shift in education has occurred. Learning has moved away from typical stand and deliver lecture, and towards more creative and collaborative environments via the internet – in the Cloud. These new environments not only promote collaboration among students and teachers, but also allow schools to explore and utilise changing technology options for students.

These technology options support a wide variety of learners, including English Language Learners, struggling readers and writers, and even educators who need access to more effective strategies to implement in the classroom and beyond. 

Are we ready to be up, up and away with making a difference for our students?

“ Artists and scientists never really get an opportunity to communicate. Scientists often see themselves as not being creative and artists often see themselves as being non- scientific….and thats absolutely not the case. Technical skill plus creativity equals innovation. We are not going to innovate our world if we don't have more people coming to the table sharing their disciplines to create.”  

•  Dr. Christophe E. Jackson 
  Scientist and Musician 
  Researched intersections between music and engineering 

 

Peter is a science teacher that is still practicing his art form through the media of photography using elements & principles of design to capture his travels and macro insects. 

Brittany is a visual art teacher who studied Neuroscience who still practices her own art form through large scale paintings and drawings, whose subject matter is heavily influenced by the sciences. 

This past year, we decided to disrupt learning in the way our students view the arts and sciences. Often, they are are seen as separate things - rational facts vs. creative exploration. It came with challenges as our school follows a traditional block schedule but we made it possible whenever and wherever we could giving students an alternative learning path in and across both classes. 
We believe STEAM, Design Thinking, Elements & Principles of Design, etc. are all pointing students to the same way of thinking - so we’ve presented them to students as one thing; using the same language and actively aligning our processes we used in both classrooms to talk about both art and science.

Referencing Da Vinci as a ultimate practitioner of both art and science - we used many of his theories to make our works come to life. 

We will roll out our own STEAM and Scientific Illustration class curriculums and give teachers the opportunity to be hands on and try a variety of our projects and give practical ways we connected our science and art classes. 

 

Those experiences and lesson plans include but aren't limited to: 

physiology through medical illustration and dissections - to render organisms and scientific process through illustration from a greater understanding of their structures and functions- to implement design thinking to create machines or program arduinos that will interact with art materials creating final art pieces - photography tricks to capture a more dynamic view of the microscopic world - using & improving artistic techniques for any teacher to take visual and visible learning to the next level in the classroom in any and all scientific illustrations. 

Dennis and Chris will create a Breakout.EDU session, allowing attendees to experience the joy of experiencing Breakout.EDU as students do. The demonstration models how Breakout.EDU can be used effectively in any classroom, for any subject. The challenges will include exposure to EdTech resources and successful assimilation of these resources into the lexicons.

Importantly, Breakout.EDU enhances any classroom, at any grade level. I would check every box  in the "This presentation can help teachers working in the following areas" below if I could. Everyone will benefit from this resource.

In 2011 a large earthquake hit the east coast of Japan near its main island, Honshu. An hour after the earth quake a Tsunami hit the coast with waves flattening everything up to 10km in-land. The Fukushima Daiichi rector was severely damaged and an exclusion radius was put in place. Robots were sent in to gain valuable data which allowed Scientist and Engineers to make critical decisions.  

I will focus on the application of this real-life scenario to engineer a search and rescue robot capable of gathering relevant data to make educated decisions with limited resources and how do we give students the fundamental skills to plan, build and mobilise such a strategy. I will give details on the Open Academic Robotics Kit and share a detailed pathway about how we can get students prepared from Pre-primary to Year 12 and leverage iPad Programmes for high level learning activities.

In this presentation I will also introduce the Open Academic Robotics Kit

This session will discuss practices to put the new ISTE Standards for students into practice. It involves understanding what students' agency means and how to promote students' voice and choice through everyday lessons, global projects, leadership opportunities and a well-articulated curriculum which embeds digital literacy.

This session will closely relate to teachers' agency as both teachers and students are 'learners' and their empowerment do not happen without engaging educators in changing mindsets.

LINK TO SLIDES: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LUjIupLEEzHldTWQFLL7sxJywr1VUQG1cClNxTSck1Q/edit 

Want to know what the deal is with SnapChat? Do Teenagers still use Facebook? Join this mini-21CLTeachMeet session where teenagers share how they use technology to communicate, collaborate and socialise.

Getting students to be facilitators of their peers’ learning is powerful for them and authentic too. Enabling your students to provide support and guidance to their peers and to create new learning collaboratively; deepens the understanding and increases the attainment of all students.

In this workshop we will show you how we have done this to great effect and what tools and resources you can use to make the same phenomenon happen with your students. This presentation is suitable for any teachers and school management from early years to middle school who are interested increased student engagement and attainment.