The Vision Revealed! LIBE 477 Final Vision Project Post #3

 

“How can we begin to move schools to become places of more relevant, connected, creative learning?” 

- Will Richardson, “Why School?”

 

This is not an easy question to answer. It’s certainly not one where there is a quick solution. A big key idea floating in my head during this course has been how do we change up the way we do things in school, how do we create engaging atmospheres and how do we connect to students? Bringing in my passion was key here. I’ve always been a hands-on, science-is-fun kind of person. So naturally, I ended up doing something in that vein for my final project.

 

My Project:

A Digital Makerspace

This wasn’t an easy endeavor. My plans to create borrowable bins that correspond to a website, which then also need to include all the lessons and the corresponding books was a challenge.

Having been an ADST teacher I had enough background and a handful of tried-and-true lessons that I could start with something in my back pocket. My biggest challenge was going to be building a website from scratch and trying to also develop the logistics of how it would all work.

 

The Process:

Having worked in my district as an ADST teacher, and seeing what resources were available and what wasn’t, I knew that with this being new to many teachers that most teachers felt that it was a back-burner type of subject. I wanted to see how others felt currently, and what feedback they would have if my idea would come to fruition.

I created a survey (with a site called SurveyMonkey) with 10 questions, asking teachers about what they would like support in, in connection with the ADST curriculum:

How do you currently feel about the ADST curriculum?

Would you be interested in any of the following as an educator? (Borrowable kits, digital lesson space, place to upload lessons, support from teacher librarian)

If there was a program to borrow a box of lesson specific materials with digitally accessible content, how likely are you to use it?

How likely would you recommend this program to a friend?

What grade do you teach?

What about the ADST curriculum do you wish you had support in? (creating lessons, obtaining materials, ways to show evidence of learning, the content/curriculum)

What would you like to see be in this type of program?

What excites you about this program?

How do you find the support level in your school/district for lessons/materials?

How likely are you to use this program if it were in your school versus orderable program?  

 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/stories/SM-CMKNKN82/

You can click the photos above to see the actual responses I received!

I received 7 responses from fellow educators and the overall feeling I got was very positive from them. They were eager to hear about a program like this being developed.

“Being able to easily access items is a huge time saver which makes me extremely excited!!”

“-Online database for lesson, with videos and step by step instruction -Kits that are in schools and ready to be used right away. I understand that material is always going to be an issue, so I do think that lessons around inexpensive material would be a big buy in for teachers. Having a database organized by maybe easy to hard lessons/activities. -Workshops put on that actually show you the lessons or how to do the items with limited spaces or materials -Database where teachers could post lessons as well.”  

 

Building the website itself had some issues once I got started. I originally had started using a website builder and a few hours into building it realized that I would not be able to create products that are borrowable, and allowed file sharing, it would be purely be for information. Moving onto Wix, I found I was able to create both of those. Once I had a basic template of a website set up, I had to create the “Creative Crates”, and theme them based on the grade range’s curricular competency. 

 

Once I had a themed crate, I had to create the lessons, and materials. For lesson materials to be downloadable and editable I had to use Google Docs, and upload them into a Google Drive, which then got displayed as a widget on my website. This meant for each lesson it had to be uploaded into google drive and then put into corresponding folders. 

 

As this is just a start to my project, I focused on the Play.Discover.Learn. K-3 crates and cobbled together some lessons and resources needed for each theme.

Once I had a few lessons and resources uploaded and ready to go, I made the stories creative kit materials. Ideally, in future, these materials would be reusable items that I wouldn’t have to replenish with every “take out”.

I had been following a few Teacher Librarian blogs on Digital Makerspaces, surfing Pinterest and looking at purchasable kits from educational retailers to gain an idea of what was needed for these kits to work. This combined with my knowledge of creating ADST lessons, while working in a limited space, allowed me to create a pretty cool little project.

 

 

 

A big aspect of my website was to be able to network with other teachers. I created a “Share Space” where teachers can share lessons, photos, and other pieces of knowledge. I felt this fit in well with the theme of continuing to develop our PLN’s that we discussed both in this course and in my blog. My hope is to eventually develop a space within that where teachers and classes can create challenges and present them to other classes and post results. This can create some pretty cool connections with classes around BC. 

 

The Future:

My future steps are to hopefully keep plugging away at the lessons and resources, which I will hope to merge with the Library Website if this project gets taken up by a school. The idea will be to share this website and the concept of borrowable kits with my administrators and Teacher Librarian to test run a year of running the program out of the library or a resource room.

 

So take a peek at my website, and click on lessons, on links and learn something new! 

Click me!

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References

"Our Virtual Makerspace (Elementary Master)". Google Docs, 2020, https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSHipyygeVpJD0uFpRqFjMC5QMS3uI09TZVOiD9tWADKVygmFZkYIEUOuNjgritnKO4zylPMI9UcGd2/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000#slide=id.gac23188f2a_2_0.

"Wix". Wix.Com, 2020, https://www.wix.com/.

"Youtube". Youtube, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/.

Miller, Shannon. "Our Virtual Makerspace Is Open!". Vanmeterlibraryvoice.Blogspot.Com, https://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com/2020/07/our-virtual-makerspace-is-open.html.

"Pinterest". Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.com/.

Richardson, Will (2012). Why School? How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere [eBook edition]. Ted Conferences.

"Surveymonkey: The World’s Most Popular Free Online Survey Tool". Surveymonkey, 2020, https://www.surveymonkey.com/.

"Virtual Makerspace - FRC Learning Commons Virtual Library". Sites.Google.Com, https://sites.google.com/site/frclearningcommons/home/virtual-makerspace.

LIBE 477 - Vision Project Post #2: Why and for Whom?

 The Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies curriculum builds on students’ natural curiosity, inventiveness, and desire to create and work in practical ways. It harnesses the power of learning by doing, and provides the challenging fun that inspires students to dig deeper, work with big ideas, and adapt to a changing world. It provides learning opportunities through which students can discover their interests in practical and purposeful ways.

- BC's Curricular Rationale for ADST

 

In the world of Education, the reasons why we do things, and for who we do things are big open questions sometimes. As teachers we carve our own ways in teaching content for our students and we choose how to teach because we want to reach our students in specific ways. We develop methods to reach those key students, and therefor we have targeted them and made decisions surrounding their needs. As part of our vision project we are asked why and for whom? What is our rationale for building this idea and allowing it to become a part of our personal learning journey? 

Above this post is a rationale pulled from the BC's Curriculum Wesbite. The reason why Applied Design, Skills and Technologies should be taught. It's within this rationale that I find mine. 

I want to provide learning opportunities for students to discover, in a "boxed up, here's some help for educators kind of way". Let's face it, as educators with an open curriculum, its overwhelming to plan for students to reach these goals. Below is a chart of the curricular competencies for just the first few grades!  Somehow we have to come up with new innovative, creative ideas to guide our students. 

We manage. Some of us do really well, and some of us struggle, relying on Pinterest or our colleagues for ideas (by the way, this is never a bad thing).

Enter me. 

What if...? And just hang on here because its doosey. 

What if we had the opportunity to have these curricular competencies met, by taking out a box from our local library, that then match to a website? 

As an educator, I could do a lesson, use the materials, post our results (nice evidence of learning opportunity here), bring back the box and voila! done! 

 So...Why? 

There's always a need for making teachers lives easier. This curriculum is relatively new and many teachers struggle with the openness of its content. I'd like to create a network for teachers to connect, by developing a website with lessons (shareable, I might add) and a place to post results of lessons! This all comes with the ability to "rent" out a box with the materials needed. 

So, why? For convience, networking and collaboration, a passion for hands on learning and connecting with our libraries! 

For Whom? 

Educators and Teacher Librarians. The idea is to involve the district after some testing in an elementary school. If I am able to get the district onboard it should be available to all. 

How's It Going So Far? 

So far I've started working on a website and creating the different pages of it. It's been tricky designing a site that allows for file uploads. I'm also trying to design all this on free platforms which has some challenges and limitations. 

My next plan is to create a tester kit that would go along with a lesson plan on the site. I also have an interview with a teacher in my district scheduled to ask what they are looking for in a ADST kit/borrowable lesson kit. 

I also got a bit over excited about a logo to accompany my vision.I'll give you a sneak peek below! 

Stay tuned for the next blog post which will include (dundunnah!) my vision project! 

Sources:

Wix.Com, https://www.wix.com/.

"Applied Design, Skills And Technologies | Building Student Success - B.C. Curriculum". Curriculum.Gov.Bc.Ca, 2020, https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/adst.