Sharing is Caring

Les Constituants du sang

La Grande et la petite circulation

La dissection d’un coeur de porc – vidéo

 

 

 

 

As I consider the broad topic of the course and my personal interests and my students’ current Expo projects, the following questions pique my interest:

1. How the reading/writing process complement each other and how do the processes of consuming/creating infographics and modern social media compare to what we know about the former processes.
2. How to become more sophisticated in using search algorithms to better respond to our educational goals? In other words, to acknowledge how a search engine’s algorithm’s limit our search results and may filter our findings so that we end up in an echo chamber. How can we intentionally exit this echo chamber and see other points of view? The Orchid Box is one such starting point.
3. How Creative Commons came to be, what their mission statement is, whether knowing about and following CC guidelines is enough of an ethical parameter for creating and using content online. If it is limited, what are its limitations? Also, when students create art/writing/poetry/music, etc, should they define their own terms of use from an early age?

All of the three points above relate to the consuming and creation of content. If the source of information is a single source from our echo chamber, what is its worth? If we attempt to hear other viewpoints, especially when learning about countries of the world, that certainly takes a step closer toward cross-cultural understanding. How do the very search engines we rely upon to deliver us good sources of information deliver the goods or fail us? Are we even aware of the limitations of search engines? What can we do to improve our chances of finding reliable information from diverse points of view? Finally, how do all of these questions relate to the creation of content? How can we start small, creating content in elementary school but build solid and ethical lifelong practices that will guide us in the future as both consumers and creators?

 

 

 

Works Cited:

 

 

Nessie, Chris.  Tech Tools for Note Taking.  House of #EDTECH. https://chrisnesi.com/?                     s=education

List of Google Websites With Country Codes

Richardson, Will. “Why School?: How Education Must Change When Learning and Information Are Everywhere”.  Ebook. 2012. Accessed on 16 Jan 2020.

 

I am excited to embark on an inquiry project for this course. As new technologies become embedded in our lives, I cannot help but reflect on the value of said technologies, particularly in the classroom. I am particularly interested in having my students create content and all of the questions that arise from such an endeavour. For example, what is original content? How much can be borrowed from other sources? How should works be cited at the elementary level? At a minimum, it seems like knowing about Creative Commons would be a good starting point for understanding terms of use. 

Currently, my students are working on Expo projects, studying a country of their choice. Their first project is to make an infographic that shows demographic information about the country using PicCollage. We collected statistics from the CIA World Factbook. They wrote down some notes. They are currently transforming these statistics into graphs, pie graphs, etc first in Excel and then transferring this to their PicCollage. They are also playing around with various fonts, colours, backgrounds and more. I wonder if they should add a Term of Use page to their work? 

Dr. Ruben Puentedura created the SAMR model to describe four levels of technology integration: 

Redefinition – The task is completely different due to technology. Perhaps virtual reality is used to create an interactive experience for the user such as placing a fictional character in the classroom. 

Modification – The task is significantly changed due to technology. Perhaps audio recordings can be added to visuals. Perhaps the audience can leave comments. 

Augmentation – Some improvement to the substitution activity. This might look like projecting with a screen on the wall for better visibility. 

Substitution – Basically the same as a paper and pencil activity but done with technology.

Here is a short video of Dr. Puentedura:

https://www.commonsense.org/education/videos/ruben-puentedura-on-applying-the-samr-model

Dr. Puentedura has written much about this topic in both articles and blog pots which can be found through the Hippasus site. 

Another essential resource I am investigating Creative Commons, the mindset, the rules and the resources. 

How do SAMR and Creative Commons tie into my students making infographics for Expo? We are using PicCollage to create infographics, a type of visual product which we are increasingly exposed to and expected to understand but are generally not expected to create, only to consume. By creating infographics, students will better be able to understand the infographics they come across, in other words, they will become more visually literate. In addition, acquiring the knowledge, skills and attitudes related to intellectual property is essential in the 21st century. Creative Commons encompasses four basic categories of intellectual property, accompanied by symbols that represent these terms of use. Early familiarity with intellectual property regulations contributes to the digital literacy of the 21st century learner and content creator. 

Key Words that interest me include: attribution, audience, audio-recording, coding, commercial license, commons platform, content creation, copyright, creative commons, derivative works, expressive abilities, fair use, privacy, public domain, remix, right of adaptation, right of reproduction, policies, sharing, user-generated content. 

 

Works Cited:

When we share, everyone wins

Retrieved: Jan. 19 2020. https://www.schoology.com/blog/samr-model-practical-guide-edtech-integration

Retrieved: Jan. 19 2020. https://www.commonsense.org/education/videos/ruben-puentedura-on-applying-the-samr-model

http://hippasus.com/blog/

 

L’Encyclopédie Découverte est notre ressource la plus facile à comprendre. De plus, World Book Kids contient une traduction approximative du texte.

Notre prochaine ressource est Universalis Jr.

Notre ressource la plus difficile est Universalis. Il y a beaucoup de texte est c’est difficile pour notre niveau, mais ce sera peut-être utile.

Tu peux écouter Mme Veilleux parler à ce sujet en cliquant ci-dessus.

One day when I dropped off my children at elementary school, I noticed that the Teacher Librarian had put a bunch of discarded books on a table in the hallway (also an excellent idea.) As I walked by, I saw an Astérix with the cover that had fallen off and I couldn’t resist picking it up as damaged as it was. I went home and had a cup of tea and was idly flipping through the pages when I noticed from a school stamp that the book had originally come from Cook Elementary, my husband’s old elementary school. When I got to the back page, I saw the old fashioned sign out system with the envelope and the card and the old card was still in it. I pulled out the card and my husband’s name was on it. He had been the first person to check out this book in 1984 at Cook Elementary and here I had randomly picked it up in the discard pile at my children’s elementary school about 30 years later. It now sits proudly in our living room bookshelf. That is the life cycle of a very important book in our family.

Our class is researching the Haida, and a student posted this awesome set of symbols to help us determine the quality of the websites we are using:

Here is how the symbols were used on the first day:

I’ve realized that kahoot.it might be my fave app. I created a game with errors that are currently common in my classroom: Corrigez les erreurs.

I’ll post more as I create them. Sharing is caring, non? Depends what we’re sharing I guess.

On Friday I was ushered into the world of Wordless Picture Books. What is the appeal? Why bother using them? Don’t we want kids to hear a maximum of words? Are wordless books inferior to books with words? Perhaps they are a waste of time? And how would you use them anyway? Total silence accompanied by the flip, flip, flip of pages. Then, done?

Diane’s Wordless Picture Book booklist was leaked by a colleague a week ago. My interest was piqued. What could she possibly say about books without words? Even saying “books without words” makes them sound deficient. But let me share what I took away from this inspiring hour of pro-d.

Stratégie no 1

Partenariats A/B

Quatre images seront projetés sur l’écran. Dans chaque partenariat, un partenaire, A, est assis face à l’écran, tandis que l’autre, B, a son dos à l’écran. Partenaire A décrit la première image à B. B répète la description de l’image que A vient de faire. Puis, on échange de sièges et de rôles. Partenaire B décrit la deuxième image et ainsi de suite.

Après le visionnement des quatre images, le professeur dresse une liste de mots employés pour décrire chacune des images. Et voilà une banque de vocabulaire.

Stratégie no 2

At strategic times, we pose the following questions. On pose les questions suivantes:

1. Qu’est-ce qui te saute aux yeux?
2. Qu’as-tu vu? Qu’as-tu remarqué?
3. Avec quoi ressens-tu un lien?

What is perhaps most powerful about Wordless Picture Books is the need to infer. You need to observe, to see and to interpret what is going on, and to make meaning out of it. There is no mimicry of the author’s words, no echo of the moral of the story, no easy way out. You have to transform the images into meaning and then, into your own words.

An inspiring workshop! Merci, Diane!

What a delight to have recently discovered the Richmond Public Library’s collection of 300+ French ebooks. I heard about the collection via Twitter @RPL_YourLibrary and from the children’s librarian at the Brighouse Branch. Before I go into the pros and cons, I know you want to know what I read and how I accessed the collection!

Here is the link: http://downloads.yourlibrary.ca/232D83AB-C2E4-4834-84B3-5FD66004AD73/10/50/en/Default.htm Click on French ebooks on the left hand side. This is the link for accessing the books from a computer. You can access the books on a tablet but I have not tried that yet. I also had to enter my library card number to check out the books.

First, I read Babette déteste la bicyclette by Andrée Poulin. I couldn’t help relating to Babette and loving how she wears her emotions on her sleeve. The story has momentum, just as you hope the bicycle eventually does. An excellent read aloud especially since the weather is improving and you might be taking your class on a field trip by bicycle. There are several more books in the Babette series.

Next, how was the ebook reading experience?

Pros:

1. able to browse all titles from home
2. while browsing, I could see the book covers and read a short description
3. easy to check out – one click!
4. easy to return – one click!
5. lots of white space around the text so it felt uncluttered (unlike the usual online experience with a million buttons and links competing for your attention)
6. easy to turn pages, very intuitive
7. a new book I hadn’t heard of and I was really excited to discover this new title

Cons:

1. sitting at my computer to read (don’t have a tablet at home)
2. can’t mark up the text or put Post-its in the book — correction — I noticed that there is a bookmarking feature that I need to check out

Finally, the collection. I am impressed by the titles that have been selected. There are some familiar books and some new titles. If you get ‘hooked’ by an author, e.g. François Gravel, you can keep reading more in the series.

And, now I’ve read my first ebook – ever. I’m one of those people who likes to fall asleep book in hand and I love to dog-ear the page to mark where I’m at, so I wasn’t sure how this ebook experience would be. But this is my account of the experience which will remain forever etched in these pixels.