Markville Secondary School History Departments'
submission to Canada's 21st Century Interactive Classroom Contest.
November 27, 2012
The Most Powerful Voice in Education!
The most powerful voice in all of education is that of the students. To supplement Markville's contribution to the Broadband Imperative proposal, a student of the Markville experience has shared her thoughts around the role that technology has played in shaping her learning experience. Too often we make decisions without listening to those that have the most vested in the process.
As a student, broadband/Internet access has greatly assisted in my learning experience. In my experience, it has helped me keep up with classes a lot easier, make it easier to communicate with teachers, and helped me further my education even beyond the classroom. Being a high school student, there are a few occasions on which I will miss a class or two- multiple field trips come up throughout the year and sickness has a tendency to sneak up on me. On these occasions, it's always quite hard to keep up with class lessons and notes. Normally, I would have to stay after school or durng my lunch time to get the lesson and notes, but with the Internet I can easily access the days activities through tools such as Moodle and online binders where teachers can post notes, lessons, and extra help sheets. With these, I can view the notes from home, looking over them on my own time. On top of helping with missed classes, it assists greatly to keep up with classes in general as many teachers use the online tools to post the nights homework and activities we should be doing to keep up. As a forgetful person, it is magnificent for me as it helps me remember what I am supposed to do. Furthermore, having Internet access has made it much easier to contact teachers when needed. When given homework I don't understand or a task I am unclear about, it's quite frustrating to sit there trying to decipher the concepts at hand. My parents are not exactly experts when it comes to highschool lessons, so it's hard for them to help me in these situations, and I'm usually on my own, but with Internet access I can easily contact my teacher when help is needed. There have been multiple times where I was completely confused by the homework, but was able to quickly email my teacher and get an explanation on what to do. I could complete my homework and be prepared for the next day, instead of having to take up class time have it re-explained to me then. Moreover, Internet us has helped me take learning into my own hands, asking it outside of just the classroom. With it, I have all the information I need right at my fingertips. I can easily look up more information on topics I'm interested, furthering my learn from just what's learned in the classroom. I can even sign books out from the library over the computer; you put in your card number and you can access an e book, on their database, for two weeks or so. It opens up so many doors and gives me the opportunity to take initiative in my own learning. Access to broadband/Internet has greatly impacted my learning expierience, making it easier to keep up with classes, to gain extra help from teachers, and to further my learning beyond what's said in class. It gives new ways of learning, teachers can use videos, power points, and new ways of teaching and getting across to students, and I believe it's a great tool in the learning expierience.
~Vanessa Nim, a grade 11 student.
Markville's Leadership in Tech Integration
Markville has long been a leader in Tech Integration in the YRDSB. Of particular note is the History department (www.markvillehistory.com) which for years has been a "Blueprint" of the paperless, digital classroom. They have always had an open door policy and have been more than willing to share their learning. Just recently, I asked them to contribute "stories" to a provincial initiative for a proposal to the ministry/province on the imperative for Broadband (Internet) access to support teaching and learning. Below is one of their stories.
MARKVILLE HISTORY
As teachers, we constantly strive to bring the world to our students. It is hard to imagine the world without the internet. Most of our students now do not know the world any other way. It is amazing to think that something as ubiquitous as an iPhone was only released in 2007. That something like Twitter only came into common usage around the same time. Tablets have come screaming onto the scene only since the release of the iPad in 2010. New transformative tools like Google Apps are changing the way we meet, collaborate, share information and work together. Interactive whiteboards and other response technologies have given us great power at our fingertips to assess, evaluate, teach, create, produce, and build. What was life like before broadband? It’s almost impossible to remember, especially for our new teachers and every successive group of students we teach. It is a part of what we do, intricately weaved into our constantly evolving pedagogical practices. The challenge now is analyzing the role and impact of the internet as it has become such a seamless part of our teaching and learning environment.
The Markville History department has relied on the internet as a tool for delivery, organization and the sharing of information for more than a decade. Our website continues to grow with resources, lessons, activities, student exemplars, interactive quizzes, and complete courses of study. It is the heart of our department and is a resource that people access from around the world. We receive emails from teachers, students, professors, parents and other members of the community about the resources we share on our site almost daily. The Markville History website crossed 3 million hits in November of 2012, with 20 000 new hits in the last 2 weeks. The internet has allowed us to share our resources with anyone that can be helped by them. The transparency of our program requires us to develop quality resources because everyone can see them. It is like a giant open window into our learning environment. This is a great challenge that forces us to constantly change and be better every day, which ultimately keeps us current and is a great motivator.
Every day the way we use the internet and the methods we use evolve as the media, applications and devices change. The pace and speed of change demands constant deconstruction and reconstruction of teaching and learning techniques. At the core of our environment is the paperless classroom. This is much more than simply using traditional techniques without using paper. Every lesson, activity and learning experience is in a dynamic and constant state of change adapting to the power that is offered to our learners every day. We often have to turn everything upside down, shake it up and put the pieces back together as a new tool or device is created exposing us to bigger and better possibilities. We could not have achieved a paperless environment without our department website and then the introduction in our board of the fully accessible learning management system, Moodle. The access was key, the positive use of this access has driven us in recent years.
The central question around internet based technology was often “how?”. But the tools today are so much more intuitive, user friendly and ubiquitous among all stakeholders in education. The big question we always look at now is “why?”. Some of the key answers to the question “why?” is that we continue to weave the internet into our teaching because of efficiency, collaboration, enhancement, excitement, engagement, and power. Students are pushing the growth of the integration of networks and internet tools. Facebook study groups, Twitter feeds for soccer practices and information, twitter deck to supplement in class simulations, concept mapping and sharing, google doc collaborations, real time chat and even daily emails from foreign media sources are all a regular part of the daily life of a paperless classroom. The classroom changes so much every day that we necessarily need to constantly critique, analyze and assess its development.
We spend a lot of time considering balance in our environment. When people outside of our department make comments like: “everything you do is on the computers”, we get offended. We use digital tools purposely to enhance the learning environment. It has gotten to the point that when people ask how we use technology there is not a long list of tools or methods, it is more that we just do. The technology is a part of the fabric, blending into the background. Some classes run in a lab, some with iPads, some with any digital device available, and then some classes run in more traditional environments with little to no technology. The website remains the base of the courses in or out of a digital environment. But the base of our teaching is solid, interactive and constantly evolving pedagogy. As an internet enabled environment is a given, we dedicate the majority of our time meeting and discussing innovative ways of making learning engaging, critical, fun, broad, deep, enjoyable and applicable. It is impossible for us to imagine being in an environment that does not have these combined layers of strong pedagogy, research and evolution with technology.
~Mark Melnyk, Head of History
It is time to Transform Education! The First Meeting.
On November 18th, I was invited to participate in discussions at Markville Secondary School around a new initiative they were planning to launch in the the 2013-2014 academic year. The discussion with the principal and the digital leadership team at the school was the first step towards making their vision of a 1:1 program a reality.
"At the moment we are calling it the Markville 1:1 program. It is a program that sees the students bringing their own technology to school with them. It can be a laptop, notebook, tablet, it is up to them. We want to find a way to integrate technology in to the classroom across platforms. That is the crucial piece. We want to break away from the proprietary approach to technology where we rely on programs and look at using the tech in a variety of ways.
We used the term,
"Taking the students from consumers of technology to creators with technology."
We are planning to introduce it to the incoming grade nine class to start. We recognize the need for PD for staff and we want to be sure that it is PD that is meaningful and supportive and targets the areas of need of our departments. "
~Rob Cotey, MSSI am soooo excited about being a part of this!
Our initial discussions were around the concept behind the initiative which really seems to be focusing on changing how we use technology in education. It was great to share with a group that also believes that education is at a tipping point that will see the very nature of education. It is no longer about sharing or conveying information.... students have the power to find that in the palms of their hands.... it is about helping students think critically about all the info they have access to and to create with it, communicate about it and collaborate on a global scale to produce a product greater than the sum of its parts. They have the tools available to them to demonstrates a true understanding on the concepts and to apply it to a context which is real and relevant to their own lives.
Discussions around some of the other considerations were also initiated including the type of devices they will expect students to have (primary vs. secondary devices), the critical need for supporting the professional development of the teachers to learn and work in this new paradigm, the considerations costs associated with enhancing infrastructure, equity of access and initial thoughts around deploying their vision to their stakeholder community.
Lots more to think about.... this is just the beginning of the journey!
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