Report Road Map

Our team is currently in the early stages of creating our final report, but we have come up with what we think are some pretty solid concepts to move forward with and are excited at the prospects of pulling this together.

The first thing that is important to our group is to include some of the great student work in our final report. For us, that is probably going to mean including a slideshow of some of the great images our students produced on their field trips and some of the poetry they have written. In order to best include and leverage this for our report, we are leaning towards recording a voiceover to go with the images and create a video for our final presentation.

While this will be a great way for us to provide the information we need, we also want it to be as easy as possible for a future team to use our information to implement a similar project. In order to accomplish this, we will also (likely!) have a written explanation which will go into greater depth in some of the more content-heavy areas. 

Finally, it is important to us to include our artifacts in the presentation; a lot of them have been posted in the blog above, but we'll track down some more too. Hopefully by using a variety of methods we can both highlight the impressive work our students have complete and make it easy-ish for another team to replicate this in the future.

The Geotour Video!

One of our students edited this video of our GeoTour field trip. Though this was not the final product for everyone, we think it represents a great artifact and shows a cool part of our progress through this project.

Artifacts

Not only has our school finished our first project, the Earth Science/Photography collaboration, we are also most of the way through our Poetry Map project, with all field trips for that project also completed. We have a lot of different classes involved, with a lot of different goals, and that means a lot of different assessment strategies! Great ideas and conversations are swirling around our school lately.

For Earth Science, we have tried to be as direct as possible. The task was broken down into small steps, each of which were assessed individually. This allowed students to feel small successes along the way to achieving a larger goal. When it came to the end of the project, students compiled their small steps and had all of the information needed to produce a quality product. 

Photography students had a much simpler task for the GeoTour project; working as a photographer, they produced images to meet the goals of the client, the Earth Science class. Students were assessed using a rubric and reflection form (pictured above) that they were familiar with. This made for really valuable discussion about how the assignment was similar and different from previous ones, and how the client relationship effected this. 

The Poetry Map project is in the final stretch with students from grade 8-11 at our school. This has meant a variety of assessment tools and strategies as expectations increase through those grades; above is an outline and rubric that a teacher used with Grade 9s. Using different criteria and assessment strategies with different grades has allowed us to include much of our school in the activity and produce different products from one experience. Seeing the variety of interpretations has been enriching for our whole school. 

Lots of learning has happened and been assessed in different ways through these projects, touching almost all students in our school. 

All the Assessment

The first half of our project has had both formative and summative assessment. From the beginning of the project, students reflected daily on their accomplishments, challenges, and goals. It was a shared document within google classroom, allowing me to give feedback along the way. I also had a “To-Do” list for students to check off when they’d completed a task – be it submitting research notes, slides, demonstration ideas, etc. There was always a sense of accountability that drove students. Because students were going to be creating a video documentary and presenting their project to local elementary schools, they were working towards mastery – not just completion. Everyone’s contribution to the final product was of course assessed, but the journey to the final product was where the learning was happening.

Without the Go-Pros, the students wouldn’t have felt the same excitement. They came up with incredible ideas because they knew they had the tools to carry their ideas forward. They pushed the boundaries of creativity because they were inspired by the technology at hand. The effectiveness of the project was extremely obvious. We had students who were often absent, showing up for class. We had students who struggled to speak in front of classmates, taking leadership roles. The best part was seeing students who had disengaged, engaging with the technology. They divided and conquered, each student seeming to find their specialty. The real proof of success for me was, on a day that students technically did not have class, my entire Earth Science 11 class showed up to do a full day field trip to present their Nanaimo Geology Tour project to local elementary students. J

(by Aeron Reid)

There's an app for that

We have been really enjoying working with the surface tablets. It's really exciting to be able to play with new technology; students and teachers alike have been super enthusiastic.

The only apps we have really explored thus far are powerpoint and filmora. Powerpoint is not really very exciting, but we have put a lot of effort into giving kids tools to make effective presentations. And it's working! Yesterday we took our show on the road to our two feeder schools; students gave a presentation to grade 3s and 5s (using powerpoint) and then showed the elementary students hands-on activities that we had made. It was a great day of learning for everyone. 

Filmora has been a boon to our students. Several of them have experience with video editing and exploring a new app has allowed them to stretch their capabilities in new ways. We are working to put together videos of each of our field trips right now and are excited to see the results.

Though we haven't explored a great variety of apps, we have thoroughly enjoyed working with the tablets. Onenote has also been popular. We look forward to seeing what other schools are doing to leverage the technology in creative ways!

We came, we saw, we learned. 

Our school has taken two field trips related to the Synergy Project already so things are definitely happening at Cedar Secondary. 

In November, we took our Earth Science and Photography students on a field trip to a variety of significant geological locations throughout the region. The Earth Science students gave presentations at each location and Photography students collected images. Now that the trip is over, we are working to combine these resources into both instagram posts (we have been in touch with @geostories to post to their account) and also make presentations for elementary students. It is an ongoing process to have students work with the surface tablets to create these presentations. Some of the work we have seen so far is pretty stunning so we look forward to sharing it!

December saw us take our first field trip for the Nanaimo Poetry Map Project. We went to one location which has a poem written for it and experienced it. We went to a second location which does not have a poem associated with it, and students were expected to write a poem for that place. Finally, students are expected to write a poem in a location of their choice. This field trip featured one class each of grades 9, 10 and 11; by the end of the school year, all of our grade 8-11 students will have experienced it in some way. 

The fog on the day of our Poetry Map field trip was intense! Visibility was at an all time low which made for some unique challenges and opportunities. Again, we look forward to seeing what our students produce.

Some of that good Digital Citizenship

Teaching Digital Citizenship is crucial at all grade levels and something we are trying to do more of all the time at our school and in NLPS as a whole. Projects like GeoScape one, which involve collaboration and technology, provide us with some unique opportunities to develop Digital Citizenship skills which we have done our best to take advantage of.

One resource we have found particularly useful is Mike Ribble's Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship. The format is clear and accessible and a lot of other work is based off of his. Through the GeoScape project, we have had many opportunities to include aspects of Digital Citizenship and have spun a lot of this off of his work.

One interesting aspect has been digital communication. Because we are working with two classes who are in different blocks, we have leveraged Google Classroom to allow groups to communicate with each other between Earth Science and Photography. Though students are certainly effective at many methods of digital communication, many lack skills to collaborate and communicate in a more formal way, and this has provided an avenue for this teaching.

We have also, through new technology available from SET-BC, built digital literacy in our students. Learning to operate new technology, in both the GoPro cameras and Microsoft Surface tablets, has forced some of our students outside of their comfort zones and given them new skills. It has also been gratifying and inspiring to see students work together and collaborate to discover how to best utilize the new technology.

Perhaps the most important aspect of our project, however, has been digital law. Students are very used to creating research presentations and pulling images from the internet, which is easy but of murky legality. In this case, by taking our own images the groups have ownership. Interestingly, the Earth Science students have had to acknowledge that the Photography students actually own the photos. This has created some valuable conversations and has created a deeper understanding in our students on how copyright law works and why it important.

We want to teach Digital Citizenship everyday, but it's not always an easy fit. In this project, we have had multiple opportunities to teach and reinforce important concepts, and have (hopefully!) inspired some deep learning in the process.