Enough with the downtime, time for a challenge…

August 19, 2010 — egregory

I’m very happy that the one week of holidays I allotted to myself this summerIMG_1647 happily stretched into one month. Proof of this is that on July 18th, I sat down on the couch, tea and book in hand, and realized that I actually felt relaxed. By early August, I had no idea what day of the week it was or what the date was. Sure, I had a dayplanner filled with camping, trips to the beach and other important summer to do’s, but I somehow managed to just blur the days into a succession of fun summer tasks without maintaining a schedule.

It was a great summer vacation, and now it’s time to transition back to reality. Looking back, I did manage to work while forgetting time. I actually did a great deal of reading and thinking to get ready for the challenging year ahead…

I read Ruth Culham’s  6+1 Traits of Writing and her more recent book, Traits of Writing: The Complete Guide for Middle School. The more I think about what I learned from these books, the more ridiculous it seems that anyone would just expect students to be able to write. There is so much to teach them about writing, just like anything else, and I’m excited to focus on writing in my role with the Connected Classroom project.

sfu cropped

I spent a fair bit of time thinking about the upcoming year of study to complete my Masters in Education at Simon Fraser University. Cindy, a teacher who just completed the same MEd a couple of weeks ago, recently posted about how fantastic her experience was. If I was excited before, she increased it tenfold with her post! The first weekend of classes is September 11/12, so once school starts, life is going to get interesting (I’ll try Cindy, really, I will, to keep you updated!). Anytime I feel panic about being a mom, a teacher, AND a grad student, I remind myself that this next year is all about positive stress and challenge and I stubbornly refuse to complain or think negatively about such a wonderful opportunity.

I also managed to spend time doing nothing this summer, and downtime always allows for undirected thinking. What I think about during that blissful downtime often surprises me and this summer was no exception. The main theme that ran through all my thinking this summer, whether I was  reflecting on returning to Intermediate teaching, or planning for the last year of my MEd (or tenting for a week, by myself, with two children, a dog and a 5:45 a.m. wake-up call for hockey camp!) was challenge. Challenge seemed to creep into all my thoughts. I realized I need challenge in my life; I actively seek it out. And I realized I’ve always been that way. I thought I was just an overachiever, but I think now I can define myself as one who actively seeks and needs and enjoys challenge in life.

motivator84852937e4647e01999ad78ba1fdfca9a57173ef

All that thinking about challenge left me with these questions – How do we teach that? How do we get students to enjoy challenge?  I’m hoping that theme finds a way to surface in both my Connected Classroom and my MEd research…

All photos by me. Challenge Motivator poster generated by Big Huge Labs.
Posted in Connected Classroom, MEd. Tags: , , . 4 Comments »

Summer Holidays…Finally!

July 10, 2010 — egregory

Two weeks ago, when most of my teaching colleagues were finishing up the school year, I was busy being a grad sponsor and helping the latest group of graduates pull off a memorable and safe grad weekend complete with a family banquet, a prom, official ceremonies and a dry grad celebration to finish things off. It was my last year as a grad sponsor, and one that I’m proud of.

IMG_1350

One week ago when most of my teaching colleagues were enjoying the start of summer holidays, I was cleaning up the art room and preparing the space for my successor. I also met with my new admin to discuss my new job and moved resources into my new classroom for set up at the end of August.

The Art Room

And today, after almost two weeks of extra work (brought on, I might add, entirely by me), I’m starting my summer holidays!

IMG_0059

I refuse to work for at least a week. I do have the last year of my Masters to prepare for and an intimidating amount of planning to get organized for my intermediate students in September, but for the next week I am on holidays! I refuse, just for a short time, to do any ‘work’. Instead, I am going to visit with friends, clean up my house, relax, read, exercise, sleep and spend precious time with family.

Happy Summer!

All images by me.


Posted in MEd, Reflection. 5 Comments »

From One Dream Job to Another…

July 2, 2010 — egregory

For the past seven years, I’ve had one of the best jobs a teacher can ever hope to have. I have been teaching art and photography in a small town high school. The art room was well-equipped when I walked in seven years ago IMG_0135and over the years I have managed to steadily increase my supplies and my student numbers. Classroom management has been almost a non-issue as, I would guess, ~80% of behavioural issues disappear the second students walk in the door. My students loved art and enjoyed being in art class. It was a dream job – a thriving program, a room full of resources and a student body that genuinely liked me.

And I left that dream job this week, incredibly, to move on to something even more exciting…

Get Some Juice InStarting in September, I will be an Elementary Connected Classroom (ECC) teacher in a grade 4/5 classroom. It’s always been my goal, from my student teacher days, to teach grade five. I love working with students of all ages, but I particularly enjoy students at the grade five level;  developmentally they are thinking logically but, for the most part, they’re still children. The age of the students and reaching a career goal are, however, only part of what makes this a dream job.

From what I understand, the Connected Classroom project is a great example of  how to use technology to enhance student learning and facilitate teacher collaboration across a school district and between communities. In three separate communities, there is one ‘connected classroom’ equipped with video conferencing equipment, SMARTboards, and 1:1 netbooks for student use. Elluminate software and Moodle platforms are used for teaching and learning. A block of time is scheduled each day for the three classrooms to be connected and actual face-to-face meetings happen several times a year. Teachers collaborate as a team, using all this technology, to bring a group of students together for a shared learning experience unlike anything the district, if not the province or even the country, has ever offered before.

I did have moments of hesitation when I was deciding whether or not to accept the offer and take the job. I love teaching art and photography and my job at the high school has been wonderful. Once I realized IMG_0146that I won’t actually stop teaching art or photography, the hesitation faded away. Art is part of the curriculum I’m expected to teach and I can easily use digital photography to enhance all areas of the curriculum;  all the activities I love teaching can be adapted to fit a whole new group of students.

All the information I’m sharing here is my consolidation of various recent conversations and I know I have a lot to learn before I start in September. I haven’t even met face to face with most of the ECC team yet but I’m absolutely ecstatic to get started! It’s a great opportunity and a fantastic teaching job, not to mention how perfect this situation is for the last year of my Master’s research which I’ll also be starting in September…but that’s another post!

Imagery: Get Some Juice In by Mountainbread on Flickr.com and the other two photos by me.
Posted in Connected Classroom, MEd, Reflection. Tags: . 5 Comments »

Del.icio.us

June 6, 2010 — egregory


Del.icio.us is one of my favourite, and most used, Web 2.0 tools. I can’t emphasize enough how much I value the ability to save and access websites of note from any computer workstation. I also love the fact that I can see what others in my network are saving and tagging with a few simple clicks. I am quite sure that educators who don’t use social bookmarking have no clue what they’re missing. Here’s what my Del.icio.us bookmarks look like visually thanks to Wordle:

delicious wordle

I borrowed the idea (from a virtual colleague) to tag links found on Twitter as ‘fromtwitter’ and it’s obvious from this image what a huge impact Twitter has had on my learning in just under one year!

If you’d like to see what links I’ve been bookmarking, or to add me to your network, my del.icio.us account name is emisle.  Welcome to my personal learning network!

Posted in professional development. Tags: , , . No Comments »

MEd Musings…

April 7, 2010 — egregory

As I mentioned in my previous post, I start the final year of my Masters in Education in Educational Practice at SFU in September. I’m very excited, but there’s one small problem – could someone please remind my overactive brain that I don’t start for another five months? Why? Because the MEd is constantly invading my thoughts – inquiry questions, plans for research, the slant the questions should have, the resources I’ll need…and on and on and on. It’s like my brain has kicked into high gear already.

These are my thoughts (ramblings, really at this point) so far:

  1. Through the use of video conferencing, Elluminate, SMART boards and Bridgit (all of which I need to learn about first) teach a Digital Media 11/12 course (probably, I would guess the Visual Arts: Media Arts 11/12 curriculum) to students throughout the district. Several teachers in my district are in the first year of this type of teaching in the district, although the only courses offered this past year were (I think) senior math and biology, no electives. This type of teaching seems to be the future for our district (and others) as the school district is comprised of several small towns and smaller isolated communities, all spread out over a vast geographic area. You need to drive over four hours of windy mountainous highways to get from one edge of the district to the other. Being able to offer more choices to students using technology is a direction I believe the district is headed in. I could help build on that at the (almost) initial stages of the project.
  2. The project started last September. I’m guessing most of the major bugs have been worked out and there are three teachers at my school that have taught in this manner already. This means that resources, both of human and technical nature, are in place.
  3. I could focus/teach units on how to use digital cameras, digital photography, image editing software and free online photo editors, multimedia slideshows, audio and audio editing, story boarding, digital storytelling, video, movie making, and all the information literacy that comes with working in an online environment (copyright issues, royalty free music/audio, creative commons licenses, online safety, and digital footprints/online identity). There’s more than enough in what I already teach that could be adapted to teaching via video conferencing.
  4. I am curious about the student/teacher relationship and how to establish and maintain rapport when teaching and learning in an online environment.
  5. I wonder if that rapport and that relationship would develop differently in an elective, arts based course as compared to a core course with less personal curricula.
  6. I’m curious about how the video conferencing project fits in with Clayton Christensen’s theories on disruption in the field of education. I even have nation wide statistics that I’d like to match with the formulas in Christensen’s book, Disrupting Class. And I have a previous offer of help from the books co-author, Michael Horn, to help run the numbers with the formulas in the book :)
  7. I wonder about visual literacy and how visually literate students could become learning in this type of course with the technological tools in place.
  8. I wonder about the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and how that would affect online learning environments of students in BC and beyond.
  9. I wonder about how to best engage students in the critiquing process when in an online learning environment.
  10. I wonder how best to engage, teach, motivate, guide, focus, and learn from learners in an online teaching environment.

My questions at this point are:

  • Do my ideas fit in with the direction the district is taking? Will I be able to participate in the project?
  • If my plans do fit, would I be able to teach the course in the second semester when I would need to do the research for my Masters?
  • What happens to the 9 weeks of Black and White photography with manual SLR cameras and traditional darkroom techniques that I usually start the VAMT course with? Would I have to shut down the darkroom for a year? Can I really teach students how to fully understand how to use digital cameras without teaching them how to use manual SLRs first?
  • Would the other schools around the district have the resources available for students that I’ve managed to accumulate at my school? We have six digital cameras (one a beautiful digital SLR), three digital video recorders, Inspiration Software, Photoshop, Adobe Premier and a MAC with Final Cut software.
  • Are students around the district interested in this type of elective course? I know that I’m the only full time art teacher in the district and that my art program offers more course offerings than other schools offer in the district.

Those are the thoughts that have been racing around inside my head. Of course, along with all this is, as always a strong desire to advocate for the visual arts. Up until now, I’ve advocated in my school, the other local elementary schools and in the community. With the Masters, I may have the opportunity to extend that advocation throughout the district and provide students with opportunities they may not otherwise have.

Exciting stuff!! Maybe, if you’ve made it through all my ideas, just maybe, you’ll understand why I’m constantly thinking about my future MEd inquiries.

As always, I’d love to hear your comments!

Posted in MEd, Reflection, professional development. Tags: , . 2 Comments »

The Calm Before the MEd Storm

April 5, 2010 — egregory

It’s official; I’m in! In September I  start the final year of my Masters degree at Simon Fraser University. I received my letter last week and already I can feel the upcoming change. I swing between feeling extremely excited to feeling absolute panic! I’m aware that the daily rhythm of my life, which has Storm lightfinally achieved balance and is almost relaxed, will change  dramatically for the year of study. Life is fairly calm right now, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was just the calm before the storm. I was right; the MEd storm lays directly in my path!

I’m looking forward to the opportunity to record learning, with all the accompanying struggles and successes, on this blog. During TLITE, I kept an electronic journal using Microsoft Word. That was a stretch for me as I’ve always kept a journal, but it was always with pen and paper. Six months after TLITE ended, I started this blog in hopes of maintaining professional momentum. It has served a variety of purposes since November 2008 and soon will serve as one way to record and extend my  learning the MEd year.

One thing that I found with my electronic journal was that I would lapse into personal writing at times. I haven’t done that as much in my blog because I try to stay aware of the audience that comes with writing in a public space and the digital footprint that I’m leaving with every keystroke or click of the mouse. It will be good for my brain to be forced to shuffle through and clarify the professional from the personal this fall.

Not surprisingly, even though I don’t start until September, my mind has Cotton Cloudsalready begun. Thursday morning I woke up with enough ideas to complete two years of coursework, let alone one. But that’s another post. I think I’ll let my brain enjoy the calm seas of contemplation a little longer before I share my ideas with the world…

Images from Flickr: Cotton Clouds by rob_surreal, Storm light by jekrub
Posted in MEd, Reflection, professional development. Tags: , , . 5 Comments »

Taking a Photo a Day

February 21, 2010 — egregory

I love photography. I always have. I’ve always been the person who’s rarely in any photos because I’m the one taking them. Teaching photography is an woodabsolute pleasure and I enjoy sharing my passion for the subject with my students.

Last New Year’s Eve, I decided to take on the challenge of taking a photo a day for the duration of 2010. Not surpisingly, I learned about the photo a day challenge through Twitter. My first photo, at the right, is one of my favourites so far. I started because I love taking photographs, but I also though that it might be an interesting assignment for my photography students and I like to try things out before I bring them into the classroom.

FragilityI decided to follow @dailyshoot on Twitter because they tweet simple, good photo assignments each day. It helps to keep motivated and inspired. You can even tweet your photo with a link and they’ll add it to their Daily Shoot site. I usually try the daily shoot assignment, but, if the opportunity presents itself, I veer off and capture images of my choice.

I use my Flickr account to archive my daily photos. I also joined two groups on Flickr: the 2010/365photos group (a group largely made up of After the rain...edubloggers which started in 2008) and the Art Ed 365/2010 (another group similiar to the first, but specifically for art teachers). I already had a Flickr account, so it was just a matter of finding the groups (which I learned about from my PLN on Twitter) and joining. Both groups contain members that I either follow on Twitter or that have a blog I subscribe to. I purposefully joined groups that would extend my existing PLN experience and I’ve found that being a part of the group has made my commitment more real.

The benefits I’ve experienced so far are:

  • a greater awareness, a constant searching, for that awesome photo
  • some great photos that I’m really proud of
  • a neat visual record of my year so far
  • an understanding of what it feels like to have to take photos in the same place every day. I get it now when my photo students come in and say ‘there’s nothing to take photos of in this school’,  whereas before I’d privately think, ‘how could there be nothing to take photos of in the whole school?’

The struggles I’ve had so far:

  • finding inspiration in the same spaces day after day. I think it’s time to go on some long drives to take advantage of the beautiful natural setting surrounding me. Looking at my photos so far, very few are outside of my house or my classroom, even though I take my camera with me everywhere I go. I want to change that.
  • remembering to take the photos. I haven’t missed a day yet although I haven’t posted all the photos online, but I have forgotten until late at night and then I was stuck taking a photo just because I had to. Not surprisingly, those don’t turn out very well.
  • technical difficulties. I’m getting a dark spot in the lower right corner of my recent photos. It only shows up in certain close up situations with the flash and it’s ruined a few good photos already.
  • uploading the photos to Flickr, then naming them, tagging them, adding them to the group pool, etc. Is there an easier way to archive the daily photo? There probably is, but I haven’t found it yet, so I usually only upload every couple of weeks or so.

In this time of limitless online professional development, the daily photo is a Linesvaluable and worthwhile learning experience. I’ve really enjoyed it so far and I think it will make for a valuable photography assignment for my students. I wonder about others’ experience so far and I think in a classroom setting, where the students can sit and talk about their successes, struggles, etc. face to face, it will be even better.

All images by me.
Posted in professional development. Tags: , , , , . 5 Comments »

Time for a Change

January 3, 2010 — egregory

For the first time, I’m hoping that the audience that reads this is small. I’m hoping that hardly anyone I know will notice, especially not my students or my colleagues, or, dare I say it, the administrators in my school or my district. TEN FORTYISH

The truth is, it’s time for a change. Soon…

I’ve been a teacher for 14 years now. I love it. I love my job. I love doing something important, I love the challenge of being an educator responsible for students 190 or so days a year, and I love that learning seeps into every day of my job.

I’m an elementary trained teacher with a specialty in the intermediate years. My first 7 years of teaching were at the elementary level. In that time, I taught all grades from K-7 in some sort of teaching assignment.

Nearly seven years ago, I transferred to the local high school as the art teacher. It’s a dream job, my own little utopia, really. The art program thrives with ~2/3 of students in the school spending time in the art room each year. This is partially due to the constant popularity of the photography courses which constantly transform as more and more technology finds it’s way into my practice. When I started in the school seven years ago, the only photography course was 10 weeks long and offered an introducation to black and white photography using traditional darkroom techniques and manual SLR cameras. Now I teach two Media Arts courses that have curriculum ranging from the basic traditional black and white approach, digital photography and image editing units to video projects on the only Mac computer in the school.

The change I can feel coming, the change that I feel deep in my being as needing to happen, is the move back to being an elementary teacher.

History lessonI miss being an elementary classroom teacher. I miss the classroom experience. I love my job at the high school but I miss the younger students and I miss teaching the full range of subjects. I miss teaching writing, I miss teaching math, I miss teaching science and I miss that rythym that comes from teaching the same students in the same room day after day. I love my multi-age classroom that always seems to have students working in at least four different courses at once and I know that there are many things about my current job that I’ll miss once the change is made, but regardless, the change needs to be made. The risky thing, the toughest part to reconcile in my mind is, once I leave, there will be no going back. There will be no returning to that perfect job. And yet I still want to leave.

I’ve thought about this for some time now. I’ve sensed for awhile that I would not want to retire as the art teacher. I think of my mother telling me that it’s not good to teach the same thing for more than about five years or so because it gets routine,it can get boring and you get tired of doing the same thing over and over. I’m not the type of person who does well with boredom.

One of the things I love about teaching is that it is never boring, it’s never routine and I never do the same thing over and over again. But after teaching in the same job, even with all the changes I’ve made each year, I do feel that routine setting in. That boredom. That sense of sameness. It took me ten years to have the same teaching assignment for the third year in a row. At the time I loved it – the joy and relaxation of being able to take out a unit taught and tweaked twice before! To not have to re-invent the wheel, only shine it up a little…  It was heaven! But even with all the tweaking, and the endless approaches to teaching drawing, painting, art history, and photography, I’m finding it too much the same. 

One of Those DaysIt’s sad really.

Not unexpected, but still sad. I’m one of those people who needs stability to thrive and I know that change is coming.

It’s coming, whether I like it or not.

 

Images from Flickr: TEN FORTYISH by btm,  History lesson by Elephi Pelephi, One of Those Days by Tim Cummins
Posted in Reflection. Tags: . 11 Comments »

It’s Been Awhile…

December 28, 2009 — egregory

Where to start?

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. My apologies to those of you who do check in regularly. I’ve thought, at least once a week, of something that would make a great topic for a post, but then life rushed me right past it before I could pull it out of my mind and onto the ‘new post’ window.

Here’s what’s happened in the last two months to prevent me from posting:

#1. Report cards. I’ve been teaching for 14 years and I still haven’t figured out how to do reports without the rest of my life coming to a complete standstill. Any ideas?

#2. Presentation to colleagues on Using Web 2.0 Tools To Build and Maintain a Personal Learning Network for the district non-instructional day in November. This was really a long, detailed Tech Corner designed to spread the word about the great potential for learning connections using technology.

#3. Twitter. Wow. I said that in August, and I’m still saying that now. In only six months I’ve sent 636 tweets, decided to follow 302 people and I’ve picked up 195 followers along the way. If you want to be connected in the world today, you have to be on Twitter. It’s just that simple. It does come with a price though. It’s taken a fair chunk of my computer time away from this blog but because it’s microblogging, I still think I’m moving forward with my online pro-d.

#4. Christmas. I think for the first time in my life, I managed to pull off a wonderful, organized, fun-filled family Christmas without tiring myself out. I made it a priority and I maintained balance which meant that some things, like blogging, just didn’t take place. But this is some of what I did accomplish:

  • 8 batches of gingerbread cookies (my specialty)Christmas Baking
  • 4 batches of sugar cookies
  • 2 batches of shortbread (secret family recipe)
  • 1 batch of krumkake
  • 1 gingerbread house
  • several Christmas movies, complete with treats, blankets, pjs, and other comfy movie night necessities
  • a beautiful Norwegian Christmas Eve dinner, etc., for my husband’s family

#5. I joined a book club. My first, actually. A wonderfully inspiring colleague asked me to be a member so I couldn’t refuse! We’re reading Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen. The coolest part so far was a conference call to Eric himself (turns out one of my colleagues knows him, what are the odds?!) after we read the first chapter.

That’s my update! I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I do plan on posting more regularly. More to come…

Posted in Tech Corner, professional development, professional reading. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

Tech Corner – Wordle

October 26, 2009 — egregory

At the start of every staff meeting I present a short (~5 minute) agenda item called Tech Corner. During Tech Corner, I introduce something related to using technology in education. My overall purpose is to advocate for the transformative integration of technology into the school. With a positive approach, I show items of  interest to colleagues to get them thinking about how they could use technology to enhance the learning in their classrooms.My Wordle

The last Tech Corner focused on Wordle.  I’ve used Wordle in my blog posts before, but after seeing it used at the local elementary school I decided to share it with colleagues.

Using the laptop and LCD projector, I started with a quick demo introducing the Wordle website. I then showed two different ways to create a Wordle: paste in a chunk of text or type in a URL for a webpage that has a RSS or Atom feed. I then shared a few examples, some from online sources (Obama’s speech to students at the start of the school year) and some from students in my own school (a colleague had used it for the first time earlier that day). Ever the art teacher, I finished off with a quick demo of how to change the design using choices of language, font, layout and colour. It was a typical Tech Corner – lots of info through visual examples, some demonstration and me talking through the whole thing.

I often wonder about how Tech Corner is received. Do staff really enjoy and learn something useful from my five minute technology blitz? Or are they tuning out and marking while I talk?

This time, I learned very quickly what the teachers at my school thought about the Wordle Tech Corner. The next day, a teacher came into my classroom because he was having difficutly using Wordle in one of the computer labs. We soon discovered that one lab has Java installed on the machines so Wordle works properly, the other lab has machines without Java and with Deep Freeze, so installation is a problem.  Although we had to solve that problem, I was thrilled that he was using the website with his students!

In the next few days, a Wordle sensation spread throughout the school. A bulletin board appeared with student Wordles all over it. The secretary called me in because she needed help creating a Wordle for a card for her brother (brilliant idea actually – she brainstormed words about her brother to create the Wordle and made it into the front of a card for him). Another teacher asked me questions about it. And students in my classes asked how to use the site and started creating their own Wordles out of curiosity!

This Tech Corner had a positive impact on the students, teachers and secretary at the school. I wonder, though, why this one was more successful than Tech Corners of the past. Was it the striking visual impact of the Wordle itself? Perhaps it was the use of elements and principles of design that only an art teacher would know about? Was it that the non-stop Tech Corners at the start of every staff meeting for the last three years have opened up people’s mindset? Was it that the staff are becoming more receptive to using technology over time?

My graduate diploma mentor said that quality learning often results in more questions than answers. Although I’m on the teaching side of Tech Corner, I’m obviously still learning, albeit with different outcomes than everyone else.

Wordle above of this blog post and courtesy of Wordle

Posted in Tech Corner, educational leadership, professional development. Tags: , , . 4 Comments »
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