Blossoms

Spring seems to be having a challenge making its presence felt this year, but time hopefully will be on its side. This month we first want to give a BIG thank you and congratulate  Steven Cliff of ACS International Schools  ACS administration and the IT team for hosting an extremely successful and engaging  ECIS IT Conference, the conversations, chats, presentations, twitter traffic, posts, and sessions provided a rich set of opportunities for learning by all. Thank you from all of us in the ECIS IT Community Steven Cliff and your IT Team!

From our Committee members Warren, Alan and Mariam: The ECIS ICT Conference was held at ACS Cobham International School outside of London. The conference included a number of interesting and engaging speakers, including Mark Prensky, Julie Lindsay, Chandran Nair, and Jeff Utecht, as well as presenters from a variety of ECIS schools. The conference was preceded by a Leadership Day, which included a roundtable discussion with a number of different speakers on a variety of topics. Some of the themes that were common throughout the conference were ubiquitous computing (including laptops, iPads and tablets, and mobile phones), the transformation of pedagogy, empowering students, and the need to gather data on the effectiveness of many of the changes that have happened in the past couple of years. Many conference participants were active on Twitter and other social media (see hashtag #ecistech2013).

Videos and downloadable handouts from the conference are available on the ACS Conference page.  All of the keynote presentations, as well as interviews with the keynote speakers are available on the ACS YouTube Channel.  In addition, there are several VoxPop interviews with conference participants, reflecting on their experience.

The breakout sessions offered opportunities to learn from a variety of educators coming from different school contexts.For example, the juxtaposition of the research shared by Dr. Leah Marks and Dougie Marks from Glasgow University (brother and sister, not married to each other) with the session offered by Fraser Speirs, the first educator in the UK to put iPads into classrooms was cleverly done. Fraser had iPads in Cedars School of Excellence’s classrooms within four months of them coming out of Apple’s factories. The research was conducted both at his school, Cedars School of Excellence and Bangor Academy over a period of a year. It considered the importance of engagement for academic achievement and attempted to measure the levels of engagement amongst students with iPads and without.  The research is available at: http://westscotland.academia.edu/DougieMarks

Fraser Speirs spoke of the importance of getting things right, particularly: The Culture, Teacher Preparation, and The Device. He discussed the fact that implementing iPads or going 1:1 is a culture change problem more than a technological puzzle. He expands in his blog one of the key points about the choice of the device, that the choice of device changes upon the increased complexity and time on task.

http://speirs.org/

Here are some of the resources that were shared:
ECIS ICT Conference Site: http://www.acs-schools.com/ecistech2013
Conference Keynotes and Interviews: http://www.acs-schools.com/about-acs-international-schools/ecis-tech-conference-2013/keynote-films–interviews.aspx
Mark Prensky (keynote speaker): http://www.marcprensky.com/
Jeff Utecht: http://www.jeffutecht.com/
Flat Classroom Project (Julie Lindsay): http://www.flatclassroomproject.org/
Global Institute for Tomorrow (Chandran Nair): http://www.global-inst.com/
Conference Keynote Films & Interviews
http://www.acs-schools.com/about-acs-international-schools/ecis-tech-conference-2013/keynote-films–interviews.aspx

 Voices

So often we as schools tend to forget to include our own students perspectives, and direct voice in our school wide conversations. What would our own structures, ecosystems and environments look like if all our decisions where driven by student voice…. granted this at times is not realistic but this video again reminds us how important our own student’s voice is, and how maybe they can support our own capacity in developing and enhancing our programs and learning community.

Hackschooling Makes Me Happy: Logan LaPlante

 From Our Community!

( PLEASE if you have a faculty member or team member you think should be featured have them drop me an email and share a link video or paragraph about their project.)

Grab the Popcorn and see what Students are Reading! From community member  Ann Martin Educational Technology Coordinator at Bonn International School.

Grade 6 students created book trailers as a project which had them mixing skills in reading, writing, communication, information literacy, technology and sharing. Mr. R, a Grade 6 English teacher and the Librarian, with a little help from the Tech integrator, teamed up for a collaborative project. The end products were video book trailers accessible by QR codes. The QR code for each video is pasted into the corresponding library book so anyone interested in the book can scan the code to get an idea of what the book is about. In addition the QR codes are on a poster in the library and available on our internal and external website.

Here’s how it worked:

* Mr. R instructed his students to begin thinking about which book they would like to use, to select a partner if they wished, and to watch a few trailers to identify what they liked and didn’t like.

* Student were given a storyboard outline to help them think about the sorts of images they would like to use.

* Class was held in the library, where they reviewed the definition of copyright and plagiarism. Students learned how to search for copyright clear images and music, and how to properly cite them. They created folders to hold images and a document for citations.

* Now the fun part of creation started with students choosing the software to create their trailers. Most students chose iMovie or Keynote as these were programs that they were familiar with.

* Trailers were created, saved as videos and uploaded to the school YouTube account.

* QR codes were made for each trailer from a free website.

* QR codes were placed in each corresponding book, on a library poster and on our school website.

Learning, engagement, sharing, choice… all powerful aspects of this project!

Check it out here: http://digitalhub.bis-edu.org/2013/03/22/book-trailers/