Category: Uncategorised

Free Inquiry #7 – Where to from here

On November 24, 2019

I remain intrigued by the role of current events in the social studies curriculum. As it stands now, I think I’d like to try the following:

Use the first week to get kids to find and pitch current events/themes that we could cover during the course:
- I would give them the 7 curricular competencies and 8 content requirements and tell them they need to incorporate at least 1 of each in each current event/theme
- I would tell them that as a class, we would have to cover all 7 curricular competencies and 8 content requirements
- Ensure that they have identified key big questions (ones without one answer) as a part of their theme (or we could do this as a class too)
Then, map the themes in a way that made sense to me and start prepping information that could assist us for the first ones, with the idea that as we get further and further into the year, I would start to move from more structured inquiry of the topics to more free inquiry
Use these dimensions as a guide to drive essential questioning:
- Who? What? Where? When? Why? Why does it matter? What could happen next? What can we do about it?
- Social, Economic, Environmental, Cultural, Technological, Legal, Political, Ethical?
Set aside 10 minutes a day to community time/headlines discussion.
Keep timelines, wall maps, curricular competency buckets maps, concept maps, content themes; build these together on the walls of the classroom as we work through the topics

As I continue to develop my approach, here are some key resources I plan to keep track of:

https://www.cnn.com/cnn10

https://upfront.scholastic.com

Teaching with the News

Free Inquiry #5 – Current events in the classroom as social studies curriculum – is it possible?

by mstorzer

On November 24, 2019

In Uncategorised

One of my key questions has been whether current events could form the complete basis for the social studies curriculum. To answer that, I have tried to take a few different current events and use them to meet the BC learning standards. In short, I have determined that current events can be used as the basis for social studies curriculum. Let’s take the Grade 10 Social Studies curriculum (1914-present). It has 7 curricular competencies and 8 content requirements. Let’s say we want to look at these content areas and curricular competencies through the themes raised in this article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/minority-report-issue2-ministers-foreign-policy-freeland-champagne-1.5370658. The theme here being, i.e. Canada foreign policy. Here is some summary ideas for how it would be possible:

8 content requirements:

government, First Peoples governance, political institutions, and ideologies: topics to explore include, how have different governments over time conceived of the role of the ministers/ministries of foreign affairs in Canada, what can we learn from how that role has been divided or resourced among federal ministries?
environmental, political, and economic policies: topics to explore include, what are some of our key headline-getting foreign policies, how have those changed over time
Canadian autonomy: topics to explore include, how autonomous are we in relation to our foreign policy
Canadian identities: topics to explore our concept of our selves as defined in how we relate to other nations (e.g. history of peace keeping, what is our role on the international stage, and how has the changed over time?)
discriminatory policies and injustices in Canada and the world, including residential schools, the head tax, the Komagata Maru incident, and internments: topics to explore include, how has Canada’s foreign policy contributed over the last 100 years to discriminatory policies and injustices
advocacy for human rights, including findings and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: topics to explore include, what UN human rights agreements has Canada been a part of?
domestic conflicts and co-operation: topics to explore include, how do regional differences impact Canada’s take on foreign policy, e.g. dairy industry and negotiation of trade rights and obligations
international conflicts and co-operation: topics to explore include, who are Canada’s allies, now and how have they changed over time (NATO, Paris Agreement)?

Through the exploration of the content, build the curricular competencies:

use inquiry: Let the students ask the questions
assess significance: Ask why does this matter?
assess evidence: Look at different sources to examine the different facts, opinions etc
compare and contrast continuity and change: look at the issue now and how it has changed over time
assess cause and consequences: Look at what has happened now, and over time, and see what were the beginnings of this issue? what will be the consequences of it in the future?
explain and infer perspectives: who are the actors? what are different ways of knowing?
make reasoned ethical judgements and assess appropriate ways to remember and respond: has Canadian foreign policy been successful over the last 100 years? where to from here?

Ed tech blog #8 – Universal Design for Learning

by mstorzer

On November 24, 2019

In EdTech, Learning Design, Uncategorised

It was great to get this link to the guidelines for Universal Design for Learning http://udlguidelines.cast.org. We have been hearing a lot about it, but it is nice to have a framework to understand it and start to attached meaning/potential actions too. As I think about my practice going forward, it seems like UDL holds the key to ensuring all learners have the potential to be the best they can be. This framework gives detail, which I appreciate, but I also think just keeping in mind the very basics of the structure, i.e. enabling multiple means of the what, why and how of learning, will be helpful in all planning going forward. In some ways, this is yet another way of saying a lot of the same things we have been learning about over the term across all our classes (importance of voice and choice, importance of multimodal). Nevertheless, it provides a good summary which I know I will use.

Ed tech blog #7 – EdCamp in Inquiry

by mstorzer

On November 5, 2019

In Learning Design, Pedagogical Practices, Uncategorised

I appreciated being exposed to the EdCamp/unconference concept. In Diving into Inquiry (https://www.trevormackenzie.com/dive-into-inquiry), Trevor Mackenzie talks about the first few days of his class being devoted to developing the curriculum for the year. I wonder if doing this through the structure of an EdCamp would work. I would be interested in seeing how it would be possible to borrow some of the key components ( https://www.edutopia.org/blog/edcamp-is-future-of-pd-mary-beth-hertz) and things that people have found work well in in EdCamps (https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-10-5-tips-for-planning-a-kidcamp-the-student-driven-edcamp) in order to try it out.

QGIS – training in the learning commons

by mstorzer

On October 28, 2019

In Uncategorised

I attended the QGIS training in the UVic Digital Scholarship Commons (DSC). Like all the trainings I have been exposed to from the DSC, it was well organized and worthwhile. The facilitator had a prepared task for us to run through and then was there to help problem-solve when we ran into trouble. I’ll admit I did not get too far in terms of building my map. However, beyond the learnings about QGIS, I like the teaching model of explore and problem-solve with a guide on the side. I think this might be challenging in a class of 25, but I still think it might be worth a try. Or maybe the Digital Scholarship Commons might be open to a partnership with a high school?

Ed tech blog #5 – PSII visit and Inquiry in the classroom

by mstorzer

On October 24, 2019

In Free Inquiry, Pedagogical Practices, Personal Learning Networks, Uncategorised, Understanding Learning

I found the visit to Pacific School for Innovation and Inquiry very inspiring and eye-opening. I am most curious about how to use an inquiry approach in the everyday public school classroom. For some insights into this, the founder of the school suggested checking out the work of Trevor MacKenzie who has been using inquiry in his classroom for years (https://www.trevormackenzie.com). From there, I listened to some of his podcasts and read his first book on the topic – Dive into Inquiry (https://www.trevormackenzie.com/dive-into-inquiry). There are so many useful ideas in the book. And while we have been asked to do a lot of inquiry as our assignments so far, the book provides some very good insights into how exactly you would apply this method as a teacher in a public school classroom. In addition, the PSII website also provides some very good resources to draw from. I was especially interested in the Learning Verbs Depth Chart http://learningstorm.org/learning-verbs/. With these resources, I’d like to start mapping out a series of activities/lessons to put this into action.

Ed Tech blog #4 – Byproduct of technology

by mstorzer

On October 18, 2019

In Privacy & Safety, Uncategorised

One thing I took from Jesse Miller’s presentation was the idea that technology always has a ‘byproduct’. The example he gave with the captchas really caught me off guard. I had never considered that captchas were being used for any other purpose than ensuring that I wasn’t a robot. That Google could be covertly using this information for another purpose, i.e. to improve self-driving cars, seems brilliant but wrong. To me, consent is essential in all spheres and technology is no different. If our brains are being used for some purpose, I think that at the very least we should be demanding that our ‘agree’ is received prior to engaging. From now on, I will be a lot more wary about what I am giving away to technology and seek with each interaction to discover the hidden by-product. And as a teacher, I will be even more wary, especially when I ask my students to interact with it.

Free Inquiry #3 – James Kendra on Social Studies in the classroom

by mstorzer

On October 18, 2019

In Free Inquiry, Uncategorised

I sat down to watch James Kendra’s Ted Talk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=748&v=yrYGFdzQSmg.

He hit on so many of the points that I have been thinking about in relation to Social Studies teaching. One of the key reasons that I wanted to look at the use of current events in Social Studies teaching is to explore whether it could be the hook to create relevance for students. I hope to never have to hear the question ‘why do I have learn this’ because it will be so obvious to them the relevance of the material. The question in my mind is – what makes something relevant to us?

In his talk, Kendra starts to explore some of his answers to this. He talks about a content-free classroom, but it seems that what he means by that is not so much content-free but rather predetermined-content-free. He seems to be espousing the idea that by teaching through current events and allowing students to ask questions about events that are relevant to their lives it sparks their passions/interest, and that this in turn leads to better citizens. The questioning that occurs also is bound to lead down the road of history, geography, civics, economics etc. making it easy to cover any pre-determined content that may exist. He contrasts the approach with the more traditional social studies classroom which not only overall had a major emphasis on history, but also very often started in the past and too often never made the link to the present. He speaks about how he thinks students need to be able to understand what is going on now in order to understand what went on in the past.

Given all of this, I’m interested in reading/thinking more and testing a method of Social Studies teaching that looks like:

starting in the here and now (i.e. current events)
allowing students to ask their own questions (connection to inquiry here) about the current events to get them thinking deeply about what is going on and why.

It seems the recent changes to the curriculum with a move toward less pre-determined content in the classroom, may create the space and time to do the above. If what Kendra says is true, teaching through current events and with student-led questioning, may be the way to getting kids inspired and invested in Social Studies.

In my next step in this learning – I plan to take a current event and see if I can identify:

what curriculum big ideas, competencies and content could be covered
what kind of strategies I would need to employ to make ‘teaching through current events’ effective.

Ed Tech blog #3 – Video editing

by mstorzer

On October 18, 2019

In Audio Editing, Uncategorised, Video Editing

I loved the class we had on video editing, Audacity, and Screencastify. Thanks to Rich McCue and the UVic Digital Scholarship Commons https://onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/dsc/ – what a great resource they are for our community. I enjoyed going a little more in-depth on iMovie with this class. And since that class, I have been making many more with the additional knowledge, including a Thanksgiving video for my friend who lives across the world and who misses autumn in Canada. The educational applications for all three of the tools that we were introduced to – iMovie, Audacity and Screencastify – seem boundless to me. Especially in this era where essays and tests are no longer at the top of the summative assessment hierarchy, I am looking forward to inviting students to demonstrate their learning through any and all of these methods.

Ed Tech blog #2 – FIPPA

by mstorzer

On October 10, 2019

In Privacy & Safety, Uncategorised

I appreciated the discussion of FIPPA, as I can see the importance of considering how the technology used in classroom activities impacts privacy. As I interact with many new technology tools over the course of this program, I am experiencing an abstract random nature to my clicking of ‘agree’ and ‘allow’ or ‘next’ after inserting my name or email. Even when I try to pay attention to what I am giving away, including attempting to read the pages long explanations, I often still don’t really understand the implications of the ‘agree’ and ‘allow’. In the end, I usually grant access to the various tools to do what they will with my computer and my personal information. I find my decision often goes something like this: if so many people are using this program, how bad can it be that bad? Given recent fiascos about how information has been used and abused, I wonder if this will come back to haunt me one day. I say this as a reminder to myself, to try to dig deep with my students on this issue before I ask them to proceed merrily down the tech access path of ‘allow’, ‘agree’ and ‘insert email’.