The New Communication

The other day I was asked to take a look at Michael Fullan new paper called: 

Great to Excellent: Launching the Next Stage of Ontario's Education Agenda. 

After reading this paper I was asked to reflect and provide a description of how the school I am at is adapting to the changes in education. Specifically in regards to technology, social media and communication.

Fullan identifies the 6Cs that are necessary in education today:

1. Communication
2. Citizenship
3. Character
4. Collaboration and Teamwork
5. Creativity and Imagination
6. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

Over the past number of years the way school leaders interact, lead and communicate with their school community has changed greatly. The way information is shared and distributed has evolved to keep up with what is happening in technology, learning and communication outside the walls of our schools.  Not only that, we have to address how students learn in the 21st Century and how teachers open up the curriculum for the students to best meet their learning needs.

One of the challenges we all face is: How do we get these new technologies and and methods of communication to meet the 21st Century needs of our students? Here at St. Rita we are working hard to meet these challenges. The way I have decided to go about implementing these changes at St. Rita is to first know, understand and use these technologies myself.

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By focusing on areas such as the 6Cs myself, I am trying to lead from the middle and modelling and encouraging the use of new technologies and ways to communicate with a wider audience. The idea is that teachers will transfer these skills, concepts and ideas into their classrooms and teaching.

Some of the thing that we have done at St. Rita are:

Communication

• St. Rita Twitter account: Used for announcements, to showcase student work and to provide resources for parents. This account is also linked to a St. Rita Facebook page so all the tweeted links go to Facebook.
• St. Rita Staff Room: A place to share information and an effort to use meeting time more effectively by not dealing with small administrative items. This allows for more discussion for school improvement at meetings.
• Using screenr.com: St. Rita Flipped Parent Announcement - This was used at the beginning of the year to be an alternative to the traditional paper announcement.
• St. Rita website: constantly updated and the first thing that parents often see. Therefore, this communication tool is the face of the school.

Citizenship

• Eco-Squad Blog: Our Eco-Squad has worked to create their own blog and they have been working with a school K-5 in New Jersey.
• My own blog is a good way to contribute to the educational community what I am doing. We are now in an age where we are all getting ideas from blogs, Twitter and Facebook. There is also a responsibility to share what you are doing with your Professional Learning Network (PLN): The Education of an Elementary Principal

Character

• We are also looking at the importance of teaching students the value of creating a positive digital footprint.

Collaboration and Teamwork

• As a staff we use Google Drive for a variety of purposes. Including making class lists for the following year: Class List Template
• Surveying staff using: St. Rita Winter Wishlist  -  Wishlist Results
• We know have Junior students collaborating together on Google Drive with each other and with teachers to complete their work.

Creativity and Imagination

• Using Google Forms to survey the students and give teachers a gateway to different opportunities for learning opportunities: Help Mr. Slack Name His Fish and The Results
• Having students use different ways to demonstrate their learning and what we are doing at our school: Hope - YouTube Video

Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

• Making use of my Professional Learning Network (PLN) on Twitter has been very valuable to be in solving problems and accessing new and innovative ideas.

Hopefully, some of these things that we are doing here at St. Rita are going to take root in our teachers classrooms and move into their teaching practice. I believe that leading from the inside out is the best way to implement the 6Cs in our schools and that leadership in our schools is a critical part of making this work.

Art and Math Fusion: Our Geometric Museum

This Friday the hallways of our school are going to be transformed into a Geometry Museum. Parents have been invited to take a walk around our gallery to see all of the interesting and creative work that students have done.

As a staff we decided to have math as a focus this school year to help us increase student learning. The first thing that we did was have a 'Math Assembly' which was extremely successful and resulted in some amazing conversations between student and teachers alike. There is no question that everyone in our school learned from this activity.

Here is a link to the post I did on the 'Math Assembly': Math Assembly: A Success!!

The next area we decided to focus on was Geometry and to have teachers look at the big ideas in the curriculum for their grade. We took part in a PLC Day where we discussed where we were in regards to our math goals for the year and to move forward to the next part of our plan.

It was amazing to listen to the discussion and to hear the enthusiasm of our teachers as they brainstormed what direction we should be headed in with our geometry goals and student work. From the discussion came the idea to pull from the Arts Curriculum and the Mathematics Curriculum for our next focus.

THE IDEA

Turn our school into a geometry museum for a gallery walk.

THE RESULTS

Every teacher and student would dive into the curriculum and produce a piece of work that was cross-curricular. Parents would be involved by coming into the school and seeing what their children have created.

Some of the resources we used are listed below:

• Guide to Effective Instruction: Geometry and Spacial Sense K-3
• Guide to Effective Instruction: Geometry and Spacial Sense 4-6

Once the Geometry Museum and the gallery walk is complete I'll share the results!