Edina Digital Age Learning

As I've mentioned in a previous post , October is Connected Educator Month . Yesterday, I had an experience that reminded me of the power of sharing , making connections, and opening up the door to possibilities. For the last two years, my district has been involved in looking at what our schools will look like in the years to come. We have done studies at the Birth-Grade 5 and Secondary level , and have some pretty cool projects underway. Yesterday, the Communications department sent out a link to a video they created to share one of the shifts in learning, personalizing learning . Edina Public Schools - Personalized Learning from EPS Communications on Vimeo . I decided to ask for some feedback on the video from Will Richardson , who was the keynote speaker at our district kickoff a few years ago , and someone whose opinion I respect. What followed, was a good back and forth conversation that I captured in Storify below: [ View the story "Connections ...

Paul Oh On October 10, 2014  Paul Oh , from the National Writing Project , presented a talk on Connected Learning at the University of Minnesota. I had a chance to interview Paul a few years ago for an EduWin Podcast , and it was great to finally meet him in person and hear his thoughts on connected learning, and education. The  event was co-sponsored by the  Emma Birkmaier Critical Literacy and Urban Education Speaker Series , the  Learning Technologies Media Lab , the U of M Department of Curriculum and Instruction , and the  Minnesota Writing Project . Oh started out his talk asking two questions: What was an interest you had as a young person that you were passionate about?  Was that interest recognized in the school you attended? The room was evenly divided as to whether they had the opportunity to pursue their passion in school.  He provided examples where people have taken an interest in a topic and followed their passions ...

These six Educational Competencies above have been identified as the core of the Next Generation of Edina Public Schools , the district I work in. When I look at each of these competencies, I believe that if we want our students to leave our district with these skills, we as educators have to have them as well. I believe that they are also the qualities of a " connected educator !" October is  Connected Educator Month , an opportunity for teachers to communicate, collaborate and share with other educators around the world in a variety of formats: chats, webinars, book studies, discussions and social media venues. Every day, the calendar is chock full of opportunities for learning and growing in all of the educational competencies above. This is the third year of Connected Educator Month. This year, it is being jointly sponsored by the National Writing Project's Educator Innovator . Below are examples of how connected educators I know are demonstrating the educa...

Yesterday, I had a chance to help some of our 6th grade students set up folders in Google Drive and share those folders with their teacher. It took a bit longer than I expected, but for the most part, the kids did a great job. Still, when I was done, I felt like I had survived this scene from one of my favorite movies! In The Princess Bride , Wesley and Buttercup learned three lessons on how to survive in "The Fire Swamp." Hopefully, surviving in a classroom isn't like surviving the Fire Swamp, but here were the lessons I learned that may help you when teaching in a BYOD classroom with Google Apps for Education ! Lesson 1: Students Didn't Bring Their Device Fortunately, we have a supply of laptops and Chromebooks available for students to check out for the day if they come unprepared. Our goal is to help students come prepared every day with a fully charged device, but some days, they forget. Having extras allows them to still take part in Digital Age...

On September 23, I took a random walk around classrooms in our secondary schools, 4 weeks in to our eLearning2 Digital Age Learning Initiative . Here is what I observed...

Collaboration at South View MS-Courtesy @lakesmpls Earlier this week I sent out a survey to our students, getting feedback on our eLearning2 Digital Age Learning initiative . As outlined my post from yesterday, we have moved to 1:1 this year through a hybrid BYOD system, where students are encouraged to bring a device from home, or check one out from the district. One of the questions I asked in the survey was: How has using your device impacted your learning this year? Most students responded positively, with stories of "being more organized," appreciating accessing content in our Moodle learning management system, collaborating on Google Docs, and creating projects for a global audience. I was pleased to see all aspects of our digital age learning framework being addressed.  There was one response, from an 8th grade student named Annika, that stood out from the rest. She graciously gave me permission to share it in this post.She began by mentioning things that mo...

Edina Public Schools is now starting year three of our eLearning2 Digital Age Learning initiative .  We began giving students the option to bring their own device for their learning during the 2010 school year; we saw slow growth the first two years. At that time, the program was called "Go Wireless," and I chronicled our progress in posts here and here .  In December of 2012 the district joined a partnership with Best Buy to provide the services of a Web store for families, and Geek Squad support for student devices two days a week in each of the three secondary schools. In return, families would see a significant discount on the price of the device when they checked out. For the last two years, we saw roughly 60% of our families in the grade levels eligible take advantage of this opportunity, and students would then bring a device for their learning. In addition, the district provided a Chromebook computer to all families of need. This partnership...