The 4 C's - This Week's Unit (That Was Two Weeks Ago)

• What are the digital age skills and how do they enhance the learning experience?

• How do you coach educators to integrate these digital age skills seamlessly into learning activities?

This week's learning module from the Coaching Digital Learning MOOC is about the 4 C's. (This was two weeks ago, but I got behind.)

1. Critical Thinking
2. Collaboration
3. Creativity
4. Communication

These skills are referred to as "21st Century Skills" and are associated with technology, but aren't they skills you would want to allow your students to experience even if you weren't using technology?


This week's first discussion question was to choose one of the 4 C's that we thought was the most important and answer the question:

What benefits for student learning do you see in integrating this digital age skill [collaboration] at your school? 

I think all four are important skills, and there are probably more like time management, self motivation, etc, but I chose collaboration simply because I feel that technology has had the biggest impact on the skill. 

The biggest question I had was: How can I plan for these skills and when in the planning process should I do it?

I suppose it is the same as planning for the ATLs.

You Gave Who My Email Address? An Online Safety Discussion

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a former student. After a few emails back and forth, he asked for some email addresses of some of his former classmates.

So I went down the hall to ask the Grade 5-6 teacher if I could leave a message on her whiteboard asking if anyone wanted to share their emails with this former student.

About halfway through writing the message, I stopped and erased it.  I changed the message from one asking permission to one explaining that I had shared all their emails with someone and to let me know if they had any questions.

At lunch time a grade 5 student came to my class to ask me to come to his class to help them. By this time I had forgotten all about the letter, and when I got to the classroom I was expecting to fix a computer. Instead, I was confronted by 20 angry students.

"Why did you give our email addresses away?" one student asked. "Who did you give them to?" demanded another.

We ended up talking about trustworthiness, profile pictures and how they can be faked, and general online safety.

These students have a pretty good understanding of what not to share online, but I would like to see what would happen if the conversation was steered towards social network services and online bullying.

I heard a story from a Grade 1 mom about how her son was playing the X Box one day, and a guy he was playing with asked him for money.

Online safety lessons cannot start too early.

The Haiku Deck Guide

I love Haiku Deck. I love how simple it is for anyone to start using and create amazing presentations. 

For such an easy app to learn, Haiku Deck has an immense amount of options, and trying to explain them has taken me a few days.

Here is a comprehensive guide to Haiku Deck (15 pages!) ... and I feel there is so much more talk about with this app.

The first half of this guide is a quick start guide - designed to get busy people creating in less than 10 minutes. I have also recorded a video tutorial that is only 4 minutes. I wanted it to be 2, but I also wanted to show some advanced features that could be useful.

Using Google Maps to Extend Book Comprehension

I just started "book club" reading with my students. I have been wanting to try this for a while as a way to mix the students of different reading levels (experience?). I was also looking for a way to extend some of my second graders thinking.

For this, the first week of our book club, I assigned the books. I wanted students to choose their own, but I also wanted to make sure the students were comfortable with their reading materials.

So, for now, I made groups of like-leveled (experienced) students.

The second graders finished their book much faster than the others. Their book was a fable called The Mouse Deer and the Crocodiles.

When my students finished reading and their plenary activity, I asked them to use Google Earth to find a place on the world where they thought the story took place.

One student asked how. So I asked him where the story happened, and the group tried to find clues in the book. I had them list all their ideas and one was a jungle. That brought us into a conversation about what jungles were, and where they are. We searched the map, talked some more about the equator, and looked for rivers.

It was great, but I felt like we were moving too far from trying to find where the story really could have taken place.

That led me to ask where crocodiles lived and where mouse deer lived.

I divided the group into two groups, so they could research both and then overlap where both animals live and come up with a location.

The first results they found about each animal's habitat was on Wikipedia and it was difficult for them to understand. I wish I had explored the page more before directing them to Enchanted Learning, but that was less help.

Then time ran out and it was recess time.

This gave me a great idea for the future. I think there are a lot of possibilities with this project since there were many skills involved.

• search skills
• map reading
• scanning for information
• reading comprehension
• knowledge synthesis
• cooperative learning

7 Keys to Comprehension

This was supposed to be a post containing notes from the book, but I finished the book a long time ago and I never finished this post.

If you get a chance - it is a great read. 7 Keys to Comprehension

Still waiting to be finished ...