Month: March 2013

21st Century, Innovation, Internet

Google Apps for Education: EDCANVAS

Sonya terBorg

This morning I was taking a look through Google Apps for Education.  Here is one I thought was pretty interesting and worth sharing:

EDCANVAS

If you are familiar with Padlet (formerly known as Wallwisher), this is fairly similar. It is a place for you to store your research on a particular topic.  Sources of information can come from: your Google Drive (documents you have saved), YouTube, Flickr, Dropbox, Google Images and Searches, specific web addresses, files uploaded from your computer, and previously bookmarked links. Basically, anywhere! When you find the resource you want, simply drag and drop to your canvas, add a description of the resource and move on to adding more.

Sign-up is through your google account – which all my students have – so is seamless and easy, and upon signing up you are invited to watch a 30 second video explaining how it works.  I would recommend watching as it really is 30 seconds and it really will answer any questions you might have.

Once created, you have options for sharing your Canvas publicly, sharing it with select people, or keeping it private.  You can email, tweet, facebook or embed your canvas – or even share via QR code. My only complaint is that the embed code doesn’t appear to work with WordPress (grrr).

In addition to simply being a place to store resources, you can play your canvas to share your work with others.  Videos you have placed on the canvas will play within your presentation, documents will load up from your Google drive, websites will open and can be navigated on screen within the presentation before moving on to the next part of your canvas. I find there is a slightly higher quality to adding downloaded documents as opposed to uploading from your Google Drive, but that might just be me.

Here is my first canvas: Passion

For further information, check out the ABOUT EDCANVAS GUIDE

Creativity, Design

Build. Make. Hack. Grow.

Sonya terBorg

DIY

I have posted previously on enabling creativity. One of the resources I mentioned was the DIY Website. It has been going for a while now and really, just keeps getting better.  In short, it is a place to be inspired and inspire others with the things you can build, make, hack, or grow. Which makes it perfect for those of us who have Genius Hour (or a derivative thereof in our classrooms) or are encouraging kids to pursue a passion (and shouldn’t that be all of us?).

Trending

One of the features I haven’t noticed before is the what’s trending ladder on the home page.  This shows the topics that are most popular amongst the DIY community.  Clicking on any of these terms will take you to see what others have been doing.

In addition to showcasing what you have made to an online community, you can earn badges for completing projects. The badges have a number of challenges and upon completion of three of the challenges you will get your badge. Here is a selection of badges most recently added:

Skills Badges

And here is a closer look at the ‘Maker’ badge and the challenges you can choose from.  The ‘tools’ section on the right will take you to web pages of information associated with the skill set you are looking at. The challenges (not in picture) come with information to guide you through the challenge.

Maker Skills

 

You can sign up for weekly emails from DIY.  On Saturday morning, they send out suggestions for three weekend projects and ask if you have any questions to reply to the email and they will get back to you.  I have been subscribing for a while and when we began our Energy unit at the beginning of the year, I was asking about alternative energy skill sets and they do email back! I have always found the DIY people to be really receptive to feedback and I am sure eager to answer questions from kids – again teaching them about seeing out information for themselves.  Here are examples of this week’s weekend projects:

As we begin our Exhibition unit on Monday, this will be another of the resources shared with my kids.  I am interested in seeing where it takes them in learning more about their passions.

Have you used this website with your kids? 

21st Century

The Playbook in Action

Sonya terBorg

The Playbook

Over the last two days, I have introduced the Playbook to my class.  I started on Wednesday with a group of seven or so kids who were ready to move on.  They took to it like bees to honey! On Thursday, I had a couple of kids from that initial group share it with the rest of the class.

Like most things in my class, there was a large spectrum of engagement and interest.  Some saw it as a chore (“Do we have to do the whole thing?”), some were inspired (“Can I start now? Do I have to ask you to do the next play?), others wanted to share the love (“Can I take one home for my dad? I know he would want to do it with me!”).

My initial reaction:

  • they like that it is different and that their responses are going to be unique to them
  • kids do a way better job of inspiring kids than I can!
  • when left to their own devices, it is quite inspiring to see what they will create
  • this is what school should be like – a journey of self in which learning is intrinsically built in

The Playbook ‘plays’ are split into five categories.  As they progress through the book, your kids will be:

Five Categories of Action

 

The skills they will be ‘forced’ to use will stretch their thinking and challenge them intellectually, socially, creatively and emotionally.  They will make connections across different subject areas and in different parts of their lives inside and outside of school, humanly and digitally.

Here are some examples from the first play in the book:

What if....?

 

Manifesto 1

 

Manifesto 2

 

These manifestos are popping up all over the school.  One of my kids, without prompting, wrote his manifesto and posted it at the place he takes after-school vocal lessons. Inspired by him, I have challenged others to post an additional copy of their manifesto somewhere outside of the school in the spirit of “putting themselves out there”.

It’s only in it’s infancy, yet the Playbook is moving up the ranks to one of my favorite things.

Thanks FutureProject!