This is my job. It’s awesome.

Posted on November 27, 2013 by colin

I’m working away on a snow day assessing some student work today. The assignment was to come up examples that explain Newton’s 3 Laws. This is what I received from one student.

Notice how i used three superheroes, and though they may have been marvel ones, that its not because i dislike DC. Also i do poke fun at aquaman, but this is mainly in jest because i do (somewhat) respect him as a hero. Ladies and gents, Newtons laws

Newtons Second Law.

Peter Parker hears that the Rhino is in town. Quickly he finds the nearest convenient storage closet and puts on his costume; Becoming spider man. He then jumps out of the 23^rdfloor of the Daily Bugel and shoots strings of web onto miscellaneous objects overhead, his relatively light weight is easily supported by the web. On the way back However he Is carrying Marry Jane on his back. This time the mass that spider man has to carry is greater; and therefore the force of tension on the web is greater.

Newtons first Law.

Deadpool is racing down the streets in a sports car stolen from the King Pin. Unfortunately Deadpool gets distracted by an attractive jogger on the side of the road, and accidentally swerves into a fire-hydrant, bringing his car to an abrupt stop, but since his body was in motion it wanted to stay in the said forward motion, and Deadpool is shoot out of his front windshield, splatting on a nearby building. #seatbeltsforpansies

Newtons Third Law.

Aqua man punches a wall. Since Aquaman obviously doesn’t possess enough strength to break a wall, the force that Aquaman applies on the wall is the same force that the wall applies on Aquaman.

So there’s that. Gives me a good laugh. And it’s a decent understanding of the Laws to boot.

Who are you working for?

Posted on November 10, 2013 by colin

I’ve had this idea in my head for a few weeks now. I was talking to a teacher in our school about a really cool project she was running with her class. She was worried that taking 5 or 6 days out of the semester was too much. She was worried that she wouldn’t be able to cover everything. I told her not to think of it that way, as she was replacing some other activities with something far richer and deeper. She still was having trouble thinking of it that way. She said that there are ‘certain things that they need to know for the next level.’

So it got me thinking, who was she talking about? Was she thinking that she had to provide the kids with some specific knowledge or skills that they absolutely needed, or was she thinking about the next course they may take and that if the students seemed to be lacking in something it would reflect upon her as a teacher in the eyes of another teacher?

Then I got thinking about the all-too-common phases that teachers use to ‘motivate’ kids. “You’ll never be able to get away with that in (fill in some upcoming level above current level here).” Or the oft uttered “Why didn’t they teach them this in (fill in some prior grade here).”

Then it struck me. Who do we work for?

Are we working for the kids in front of us, or for the imagined future-teachers that the kids may have? Or are we working for our colleagues in the next grade, or the senior courses in the rooms down the hall?

I submit that if we spent more time worrying about providing quality educational opportunities for the students we have in front of us now, that we’d be better off in both cases. That the students now would learn more and better things, and that the future-teachers will appreciate their skills. For my part, I’ll get over the fact that maybe students haven’t had the chance to master some specific bit of knowledge if they are better learners, and eager to give things a shot in my class.

So, as I thought about it, I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to be concerned what the teachers next year, or any year after that, (university prof’s I’m looking at you!) may wish for me to do in my class, I’m only going to worry about what the students in my class need, and what will work best for them.

How about you? Are you working for another colleague? Or some imagined future-teacher?

Video Physics

Posted on September 19, 2013 by colin

One of the things I want to do in my return to the classroom is to use more inquiry-based activities for the science students. Today I had them engage in an activity in physics where they were challenged to find the acceleration due to gravity. We’ve done a few other labs involving acceleration, and they’ve used a few different techniques and pieces of equipment. Each group designed and carried out their own investigation. I’m keen to see how the different approaches pay off. In the spirit of equality, I decide that I’d play along as well, and I downloaded two apps from Vernier, Video Physics and Graphical Analysis. Each app was $4.99 (yikes!) but I was very interested in how they’d work.

I used the Video Physics app to video a student as they dropped their weight against a wall. Then, using the app, I was able to plot the path of the object as it fell. That took about 2 minutes to figure out. Then I was able to see the graph of the motion with one tap.

With another tap, I was able to send this data to the other app, Graphical Analysis. There, after about 5 minutes of fussing around, I figured out how to select a section of the line, and fit a linear equation to it. This equation (y=mx+b) also gave the m-value, which was the slope. Since this was a velocity-time graph, the slope was the acceleration due to gravity. My value came out to 9.593 m/s^2, which is pretty close to the accepted value of 9.8 m/s^2! Not bad for a few minutes with 2 new apps!

So, I think I’m a fan of these apps for physics. Now, how can I get a 6 or 7 iPads for my science classroom?! If you’ve got an iOS device, like physics, and have $5 to drop, try these out. I’d recommend the Video Physics one for sure. I’ve already used it to analyze the launch of a toy rocket at science club this week. Too much fun.

Oops, I did it again.

Posted on September 19, 2013 by colin

So my blog and I have had a love-hate relationship. Earlier this week, I just went to pop into to check on one thing, and got a white screen of death from WordPress. It was a variable passing error or something crazy. It did give me a list of the file that was causing the error. It was apparently part of the theme that I had installed. I’m not sure what happened to cause the error, but I had updated a few things a few days earlier, so maybe something broke during those updates. At any rate, I couldn’t even access the login page directly via URL. I was pretty much scuppered. So after I got home from work, I tackled it again. In the end, out of frustration, I went in via FTP and simply deleted the entire folder for the theme. I didn’t know if that would completely destroy the site or not, but I was out of options. When I went to the direct URL for the login page, I was presented with the familiar WordPress login screen. Hooray! I logged in, and was immediately met with a message that the ‘current theme was broken’ and that WP had automatically reverted to a default theme. Since I had deleted the other theme, being ‘broken’ was a bit of an understatement, but I appreciate the effort.

So I learned to be more careful how and when I update things. I do have backups made of the site, but had no idea how to start with a reinstall, so I’m much happier with this result. I think I’ll stick with the default theme for now. It’s simple and clean. I just put my own header pic on it, and that’ll do. Until the next time I break something.

Who says you can’t go home?

Posted on September 2, 2013 by colin

Tomorrow marks the start of another school year, and for the first time in 5 years I’m heading back to a classroom. I made the decision last year to not return to my role as a consultant in our school board. There was a few factors that played into the choice, most notably the arrival of Andrew in our family. Other factors included being tired of the distance to get to the office when we had purposefully chosen to build our home 7 years ago in-town. I now have 3.4 km one way to school, when it was 86 km to the board office. Crazy. It feels like I get 2hrs of my life back everyday.

Over the summer, I had more than a few people give me odd reactions to the news that I was returning to a classroom. The most common was to ask me if it was my choice? I’m not sure what I was supposed to answer to that. It was my choice, but is it one that people aren’t expected to make? Do not many folks move from those central board-level positions go back to where they can actually interact with students on a daily basis and, ya know, teach? I know of several who have. Granted, there are others that move on to administration positions as well. But there was enough people who gave me the same reaction, that I noticed it as a trend. Odd.

At any rate, I’m back in the classroom, have a great timetable that I was totally not expecting to get, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the year will bring. Lots of ideas of things to try out in the class are in my head, and I think the biggest thing will be trying to decide how to narrow down those ideas to make it manageable. Small steps to start I suppose, but I’m excited to be getting back to the science classroom. Hopefully my Jedi teaching powers are still intact…

My classroom awaits!

Please ignore…

Posted on June 25, 2013 by colin

This is mostly a test. Had to change how a few plugins were setup, including the one I use to auto-tweet posts as they are posted to the blog. If you read this, please consider it a test, and return to your normal routine.

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Among The Missing

Posted on June 24, 2013 by colin

I think I’ve been among the missing on the blog for a while now. I’ve got a few ideas for posts brewing in my head as I wind up 5 years as a consultant and prepare to head back to the classroom in the fall. I plan on getting to some of those thoughts soon(ish). I’m also just finishing up a course I’ve been taking for the last 2 months, cause I had too much time on my hands. Oh, and the 3 month old little boy is taking up the rest of it. (The ‘too much time’ comment was sarcastic, in case you wondered… )

In the meantime, here was my own personal top ten I received on Father’s Day.

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Photo Experiments

Posted on March 20, 2013 by colin

My favourite picture from the last few weeks.

I restarted a 365 project this year with taking a photo-a-day. I talked at the start of the year about the reasons for stopping and restarting. So far, I’ve not missed a day. I mostly use the suggested photo from Today’s Posting, but not always, I’ve taken liberties with my shooting and done more slice-of-life photos than photos-as-art photos.

The real change this year has been the move to the iPad as my photo editor of choice. I looked back through the 70+ photos from 2013, and I haven’t edited one of them on my computer. In fact, the majority of the photos have been taken with my iPhone 4S, rather than my DSLR. The ease of the workflow has been astounding. For the phone pics, by setting up Photostream between my devices, any picture I take is automatically zipped over to the iPad, where I then edit and upload using a few choice apps. If I take pics with my Canon Rebel DSLR, I simply pop in the camera connection kit, pop in the SD card and upload to the iPad, then proceed to editing. Most pics have been edited on the iPad in my favourite easy chair, for the most part.

As for the apps, this is where I’ve noticed the speed of the workflow increase significantly. Rather than firing up Photoshop or Aperture or iPhoto on my computer, I simply launch one of a few choice apps. I like the official Flickr iPhone app for use on the phone, but they don’t yet have an iPad specific version. The two that I find myself using most often are Flickrstackr and Camera! Awesome. Flickrstackr is great for basic photo edits, and uploading to my Flickr account. In fact, if they had commenting features added in, Flickrstackr would be just about perfect for photo managing and social networking on Flickr. Camera Awesome has become my go-to app for filters and effects. I’ve bought the add-on packs to have a few 100K of options for filters and effects. It’s pretty easy to find one that fits the pic that you’ve taken.

There are a few others that have been useful and I’ve played with a bit including Photoshop Touch, iPhoto, ColorSplash, Snapseed and Dipic.

So photo taking has become fun again. Combine the ease of a great camera that goes everywhere I go in my pocket, and the ease and fun of editing and uploading and I’ve got a process that’s a ton of fun.

40 mm lens for my DSLR.

Andrew and #learning2030

Posted on March 20, 2013 by colin

Warning: Tired parent. Rambling ahead!

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a taping of TVO’s The Agenda at Trent U in Peterborough. They are doing a series focused on education, and this show focused on the use of technology by teachers and students. I was fortunate enough to get to speak a bit during the show and rambled on a bit towards the end of the program. There’s been lots of great discussion around the issues raised, and I hope that this serves to continue to elevate the level of conversation about changes to education in Ontario. TVO has called their series Learning 2030 because a child born last year when they started would be due to graduate high school in 2030

I’ve been considering all the challenges and changes in education a lot these past weeks. Due in no small part to this.

Meet Andrew. Andrew was born this past weekend on March 16th. Andrew has an older sister Anna who is currently in Grade 4 as well. So our family now has doubled our stakes in the value of the Ontario education system. Andrew enters a world where he will never not know about the iPad. Where he will always be able to see his grandparents face to face, even though some of them live 1200 kms away. His world will include video surveillance and real-time tracking and analytics about many aspects of his life. His generation will face challenges that we are still in the process of uncovering, let alone dealing with.

Of immediate concern is the education system that he will be entering shortly. Full day kindergarten awaits him (at the moment anyway, political winds of change notwithstanding). Will it be helpful to him or not? Will Ontario continue its path towards more high-stakes, full-scale testing in the name of ‘improvement’ that can be measured in numbers that make for happy real-estate agents and politicians? Will his teachers continue to be maligned in the pubic sphere by politicians and a populace that think they understand what’s wrong with education and how to ‘fix’ it. Will his education consist of problem-solving, deep thinking and understanding, or will it be a ramped up version of worksheets for a digital age?

As you can sense, I have some questions… As a teacher, I’m not sure that I see answers that I deem worthy of implementation. I wonder how to do some of the things that I think are required, and look at the whole Titanic-sized system and wonder how we can change the course of the ship. Sometimes I think that the answer is to reboot it completely, and rather than make change in the one we have, to think of ways to re-invent it from the ground up. Of course, there are numerous questions that arise with that, due to the highly politicized nature of education that is funded via public coffers. Everyone deserves a say, and everyone thinks that they deserve to be not only listened to, but obeyed. Democracy works on principles of the value of debate, but not every idea is created equal, or can be implemented.

So what to do? Do we examine the concept of curriculum itself? Change the way we actually produce and write the documents that are meant to guide learning because those documents are predicated on everyone learning the same thing at the same time. Will modern learning look like this? Do we examine the point of schools themselves? Do we examine what it means to be a teacher? Is what happens in a classroom the only thing of value? Do students learn valuable things when we engage them in things that are traditionally ‘extra’-curricular? Does this mean that they are not ‘extra’? Does this mean that things like the workday, job descriptions and pay need to be examined to critically assess whether or not they would actually meet the needs of a learning environment for not just 2013, but off into the future of 2030 and beyond?

Big questions I know, but I’m not sure that we can do anything without asking some of those deep questions. Do I have answers? I’m not sure, I have ideas, but most of the ideas I have seem to require a fundamentally different system that the one we see now. And I’m not sure how to address that.

I do know one thing. As a teacher, I’ve been convinced of the value of open-ended, deep learning that gets beyond a surface approach to curriculum topics, so I will continue to advocate and promote that in my work. As Anna & Andrew’s dad, I’ve got a new sense of urgency. Change takes time, and deep, systemic change takes that much more. We may have been talking about what learning will look like for Ontario students in 2030, but now I’m talking about what learning looks like for my kids. Not just in the future.

Today.

Research Frameworks into the Classroom

Posted on February 7, 2013 by colin

I used this presentation last week to help facilitate a discussion about ways to think about classroom practice, teacher learning and student tasks in light of a few research-based frameworks. I tried to tie together TPACK, Elmore’s instructional core and Puentedura’s SAMR framework into some sort of coherent whole. While not perfect, we did have a great discussion about different tasks that students engage in with technology, and where in SAMR they might fit. There was some great debate about what an augmentation v.s. a modification of a task might actually mean. I freely borrowed from Puentedura’s slides and ideas about how to present his SAMR model to put this together. If it can be of use to anyone, feel free to use and adapt!