The SHIFT Blog

Well Shifters, it has been a great semester!  Since starting this blog in February of this year, we have had so much fun learning about what teachers are doing in their classes and talking about what they hope to do next. We hope that we did a little to inspire you to think differently about what you teach and how you teach and that you got excited to take some risks.    Working on this project forced us to learn a lot, and most of that learning was driven through trial and error.  Jamie used a Mac for the first time.  Matt built several rigs to help us with our sound recording.  We learned how to blog, edit video, talk on camera and listen to ideas.  We made lots of mistakes that hopefully nobody noticed.  Although, to quote Marisa Cavataio when we visited her Productions Class at Nelson High School, “The most important thing you will do in this class is make mistakes”.   Our mistakes bore fruit!  We just recently passed 10,000 v...

Matt and I dove headfirst into this pilot project.  We had goals; highlight innovative practices in education; get more people sharing what they do; publish our observations.  We had a vision on how to share; blogging, videos, podcasts.  We knew these things would take time to establish. What we didn’t have was a clear idea about what innovation is.  Thankfully, we had experts we could rely on.  Cindy Cosentino, IPL of Science for the Halton District School Board, provided us with a great foundation of what it means to be an innovative person.  Add to that our participation in the Innovator's Mindset online course and we were ready to roll! So here is what we’ve come to understand about Innovation: 1) Innovation is a process that improves something Innovation is a process Let’s be clear on this, if something is labelled “Innovation” but it isn’t improving something, it isn’t innovative.  Innovation is needed to improve products...

First of all, some required reading before you dive into this post.   The #Observeme challenge was issued at the beginning of this school year by Robert Kaplinsky , an educator in the United States who was inspired by some images he saw on twitter.  Several teachers and administrators in the Halton District School Board took up the challenge.   Not familiar with #Observeme ?  The challenge is easy and anyone can do it.  Simply put a sign on the door to your classroom or office inviting anyone into your space to observe what you do.  Point out some things a visitor should look for, ask for feedback, be inviting.  The great thing about the #Observeme challenge is that it isn’t about being judged, or showing off.  Rather, it is about being open to sharing what happens in your classroom with others.  Educators should be modelling good behaviours to their students and sharing is certainly one of those behaviours.  By being op...

This past Sunday many of us participated in session two of the Innovator’s Mindset Massively Open Online Course ( #IMMOOC ).  It is thrilling, honestly, to be participating in a community of educators who will give up their Sunday evening to learn.  Clearly there is a desire from those of us in education to receive Professional Development differently.  Lots of the conversation in the back channel revolved around alternative ways to deliver messages to staff.   One of the the ways of delivering staff learning that Matt and I have experience with is a “March Madness” approach.   Not that March Madness... We can’t claim credit for this particular format, as there are many schools who dabble in this type of staff learning.  In a nutshell, various topics of learning are offered throughout the month.  Each staff member is expected to sign up and attend at least one learning session however nothing stops someone from participating in all of the sessi...

Matt and I listen to a lot of podcasts.  I’ve recently gotten into a podcast called Gen Pop - A Pop Culture Podcast and I really enjoy the podcasts created by Bald Move around the television and movies I like to consume.  Matt’s go to podcasts are 99% Invisible , a podcast about design and The Art of Education , which is a podcast about art education (of all things). No judgement on this next statement please, but I’ve recently started playing Dungeons and Dragons with a small group of friends.  I enjoy playing board games and I try to use this passion as much as I can in my teaching.  Dungeons and Dragons was something I’ve always wanted to do in my youth but I could never find a group of others to play with.  Plus, when I was younger there was always a sort of stigma attached to certain types of games.  Now that I’m older...well, game on! Jamie on the weekends... So obviously I fell down the rabbit hole, as one does when they pick up a new h...

Halton Goes Back to Class As we mentioned in a previous post, this year the Halton District School Board has gone to the movies.  Keeping with this theme, last Monday the board went back to class.  Two hundred staff from the board spent their Monday evening watching a video discussion on the first chapter of the Innovator’s Mindset and participating in a live chat as part of a massively open online course.  It was fun seeing so many colleagues participating in professional development outside of the normal working day.  It was especially great for us because the conversations revolved around innovation and how it applies to the classroom. In addition to some reading and thinking, participants in this MOOC have been asked to respond to the video chat with a blog post.  Well, here is what we thought about the discussion on Monday night. 1. What do you see as the purpose of education?  Why might innovation be crucial in education? Man, George, talk a...

I spent last Friday morning presenting with Joanne Eliuk at the Canadian Safe Schools Network 20/20 Conference.  This conference, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Safe Schools Network had a focus on Technology and Digital Citizenship, Diversity and Inclusion and Health & Wellness.   While we were identified as being a workshop that fit into the "Technology and Digital Citizenship" focus, what keeps being reinforced the more we dialogue with educators is that these practices are all interconnected. It all comes down to the relationship we develop with our students and how that relationship can help students learn and grow that creates a 21st century classroom. Joanne and I gave a presentation on The 21st Century Classroom .  This was a presentation we’ve given before at Halton’s Innovation and Technology Symposium in the fall.  At that time, our presentation highlighted our own “Ten Easy Steps” and then some points within those steps for an educator to...

Let’s put all the cards on the table before we get into our book list. When we say “reading”, what we really mean is “what pages do we look at after putting the kids to bed”. It’s hard to fit in reading, for professional growth or for fun into a day that is full of work and family. And yet, we try, as we imagine most of you do to. Given the nature of this project, reading for professional growth has become more important to us. For sure we still try to find the time to read for pleasure but that time is shrinking as we get closer to launching The Shift. Certainly, if we are going to be the conduit through which innovative teaching practices are shared we better have some evidence to fall back on. We both started by reading Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era . This book was the basis for the companion documentary Most Likely to Succeed, which was screened twice last semester in our board. The documentary itself was attended by over 500 Hal...