This has been an incredible year. Looking back at July 2017 it began with a showcase presentation with fellow Apple Distinguished Educators in the Netherlands and ended with a full year of creating and sharing.
Reflection for me always affects my future planning. After going through a full hard-drive of lessons and videoed assessments I took a step back to see how the submitted student work added up with my teaching outcomes. Not only do I need to refine my process but now I can start by adding more of a research basis to my assessments. This post culminates in a series of videos made with the IOS app Clips to show how an outlook of ‘Collaborative Sharing’ shaped my learning and that of my students.
July 2017 was a great month because not only did I get to present a showcase for my Apple friends, but my wife @Mrslauraw was also accepted as an ADE. We get to share many things together and as a teaching couple, we inspire each other to be creative with technology!
The main focus of my presentation was “Collaborative Sharing” and it told the tale of amazing instances where spontaneous ideas came to life as people joined in to share their expertise. From the K12 Online Conference where we discussed areas of Creativity in the Arts to how we could expand our subject knowledge to include that of other disciplines (Math and Music for example).
It was here that I got to experiment with the IOS app named CLIPS for documenting learning and everything else! My colleague from the K12 Conference, Lidia, also began to experiment to document her classes. The simple nature of using video to clearly capture and then add vibrant annotations to the footage makes it ideal for classroom reflection.
Together we created videos that made the explicit and implicit learning in our music classrooms visible! Here is the playlist to watch all of my short music CLIPS from Grades 6, 7, 8 and 9. Just click the image.
Yet the year continued to improve as not only students created with amazing ingenuity, but I visited teachers in Norway who also demonstrated their passion for education with Mustek 2018. Invited by my friend and fellow ADE Eldar (seen in the K12 Video as well) we spent two days presenting and sharing examples of best practice, all with the goal to collaborate and learn from each other.
And finally, the power of CLIPS became evident when I was asked to help support all our middle school to reflect on their learning as a video. Naturally, I demonstrated my examples and let the students’ own creativity guide them. Students from Grades 6-10 chose subjects of which they could write a six-word story outlining a memory or experience they had in that subject. Using that as a prompt in Keynote we recorded a series of CLIPS outlining each learning experience.
The part that struck me as powerful, was when certain students used the idea of Six-Word Stories, combined with animated Keynote ‘about me’ Pages, to genuinely reflect on their learning process.
This was a strong reminder to everyone that deep reflection can lead to more genuine discussions about learning.
The year had so much crammed into it that I felt I had to take a step back and look at only a few aspects of creativity and documentation. What it did confirm was that if the teacher does the project first, not only will students be more creative, but they will go above and beyond the initial idea.
Cover image from my classroom using Quizlet.live
