Library to Learning Commons

It is hard to believe that the school year is now three weeks in. The students and teachers are back hard at work and the next stage of evolution is taking place in our library. Our library will always be a place where were can go and get all kids of books. However, there are major changes out there that way that students learn and our school board, the Ottawa Catholic School Board has been implementing some very creative and innovative changes in our schools that effect how students learn and are being taught.

Our library's are be gradually turned into Learning Commons.

So what exactly is a Learning Commons:

• A Learning Commons is a flexible and responsive approach to helping schools focus on learning collaboratively. It expands the learning experience, taking students and educators into virtual spaces beyond the walls of a school.
• A Learning Commons is a vibrant, whole-school approach, presenting exciting opportunities for collaboration among teachers, teacher-librarians and students. Within a Learning Commons, new relationships are formed between learners, new technologies are realized and utilized, and both students and educators prepare for the future as they learn new ways to learn.
• And best of all, as a space traditionally and naturally designed to facilitate people working together, a school’s library provides the natural dynamics for developing a Learning Commons.

Over the past few weeks we have seen a huge change with how people are using this space. We are going to be using the technology there to coincide with rich learning task that will provide new and exciting opportunities for our students.

The school community is very excited to see what how the Learning Commons will improve student learning and change teaching practice.

Flipping Parent Communication

Last week I saw a blog written by Peter DeWitt on a new and creative way to communicate with parents instead of the age old newsletter. I was very interested in the idea and modelled my first one from the one that he posted on his blog.

At our school we are trying to embrace more and more technology in our classrooms. I am a firm believer that if this is going to happen and be successful in a school the leadership in that school has to model and use the technology.

There would seem to be some great perks to this as they are more interactive, they can be paused rewound and repeated. I am hoping to get some feedback from parents and see what I can do to make them better and more interesting.

The program I used was SCREENR found at: http://www.screenr.com/

It was incredibly easy to use and they only thing I really want to work on is the sound quality and of course writing better scripts! You also have a time limit of 5 minutes so the announcement would not go on and on and on.

Take a look if you are interested:

Thanks for reading!

BYOD - We are going for it!

It's time..........

Whether you call it BYOD or BYOT we are going to institute it here at our school.

There is open wireless access in every part of the school and staff and students alike are accessing it. They are accessing it on laptops, iPads and NetBooks. They are using them to complete activities that promote higher order thinking skills. However, there is the opportunity to explore so many more learning opportunities.

Many students have devices that they could use on our wireless network but we have not exactly encouraged them to bring them to school.  With the right set of expectations there is no real reason why they cannot bring them to school to use.

From anything I have experienced I do not see much difference between teaching a student to play out in the school yard and teaching a student to use technology appropriately at school, and elsewhere for that matter. Having the conversation with students about leaving a positive digital footprint early is an obvious conversation to have.

This is kind of liberating. No longer will iPods, NetBooks and iPads be hidden away like contraband in backpacks stuffed in the cloakroom.

Bring them out.

Use them.

Learn with them.

Collaborate.

Discover.

Create.

Where else can we go from here?

This is very exciting.

Are there going to be challenges and obstacles? I should hope so. This is going to be a great learning curve for everyone involved. Student, parents, teachers and administrators will all have to all make adjustments. First and foremost we are going to have to figure out how to use them in the best possible ways in the classroom. That's my job and I am looking forward to it.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.........

Connecting with Social Media

Using Social Media to Connect


Over the past few weeks we have been making more of an attempt to connect with other teachers and students  blogging and using Twitter.

Teachers and students alike have been amazed at how quickly questions, requests and comments are responded to. We are slowly building the capacity to have theses conversations and interactions over Twitter and Skype and think we are going to focus on a couple of areas to start.

1. Language Arts - specifically writing and the joint writing of a story
2. Having our Eco-Squad connect with other elementary school environments clubs and exchange ideas

If there are any schools or classes that are looking for similar opportunities please let us know and we can explore learning together.

Library to Learning Commons

Library to Learning Commons


At St. Rita School we just received to fantastic news about a new initiative our school board has backed and we will start to implement in the very near future.

Eighteen libraries across the school board have been given $20,000 to help the school library transition to a Learning Commons for students.

This is incredibly exciting for our students, staff and community!

The whole idea originated from teachers bypassing the library with their students when they were looking for current resources to complete class work. Where were they going? The Internet of course! With this transition teachers and students will have the tools to easily access this up to date current information.


What does a Learning Commons Sound and Look like?

“As one enters the Learning Commons, the first impression differs greatly from that of a traditional library or
computer lab. Immediately we notice a completely flexible learning space where neither computers nor books
get in the way… the buzz in the air is both purposeful and casual and it is a mix of learners both adult and
student engaged in a wide variety of activities” (The New Learning Commons, pg. 6).

Some of the items we have been encouraged to purchase are:

• netbook cart
• eReaders
• mobile devices
• tablets

We are on a unique journey and are exploring all of the different avenues to help bring this Learning Commons idea alive to St. Rita.

Any thoughts, ideas or opinions would greatly be appreciated as we continue on this journey.

Observations of a Elementary Principal in a Digital High School

I had the opportunity to go to a neighbouring High School last week and take a Learning Walk through many classrooms during morning classes. Over the course of the morning I was blown away by so many amazing things that I saw. I would like to share some of my observations that I made over the course of that morning.

Classrooms were filled with all sorts of technology and the students were making use of it in many various ways. Some of the things I saw were:

• personal laptops
• students on Smart Boards
• iTouches
• iPads
• Smart phones

So many educators are worried that if you give students unlimited wireless broadband and allow them to use their personal devices that there will be many problems. However, I witnessed the exact opposite. The was a culture of digital responsibility at this high school and every student I saw was using the technology to further their knowledge and to complete the given task.

This visit was quite exciting for me. I could actually see what perhaps our school will look like in as little as two years. We are already wireless, have iPads, a Net Book Cart and quite a few Smart Boards.

Will we get to the point where students bring their own devices to an elementary school? This is a question that I would like to explore further.

If anyone has any experiences with this I would be very interested to hear how it went.

Why Moblie Devices in Schools?

In My Classroom?

Arguments are raging across the country as to whether or not mobile devices should be in the classroom.

I think that there is quite a bit of apprehension about this because using this type of technology is not the way that we learnt in school. The reality is that more and more students have these devices every single day in our schools.

Students that use these devices are more engaged in the classroom and bring in an incredible amount of knowledge to the classroom. These devices have become the dictionary's, the encyclopedias, the Atlas's of this generation. Let's not kid ourselves. They are not going to pick up a heavy resource book when they have everything they need on a device that is in their pocket.

The skills that students need are very different than they were a generation ago.

Students have to become:

• critical thinkers
• problem solvers
• collaborative learners
• analytical thinkers
• evaluators

Our students are being trained for jobs that don't even exist in our society right now. Why make them learn specific skills and why not teach them to be learn adaptive skills.

Here is a great clip that outlines some on the skills needed. One of the things that jumped out at me was that kids like digital media because they want to be analysed and evaluated because they want to know if they are doing things right or not. They want to be measured to see how they are doing and where they can improve.

Quotes that spoke to me:

"I want to be measured because I want to know if I am learning."

"Don't abandon traditional learning but get the students working together in a more coordinated way."

Please feel free to post comments and let me know what you think are the most important 21st Century Learning skills we have to teach today.