Arianna Lambert Constant Learning, Professional Learning and Growth, Technology, The Arts

ETFO’s ICT Conference

This month I had the honour of facilitating a workshop at ETFO’s ICT Conference. This year the conference was offered through ETFO’s Women’s Programs and it was a great couple of days learning from and with teachers across Ontario. This conference has always been near and dear to my heart because it was the first ETFO conference that I presented at years ago. In this post, I’m sharing a little about my session and some ideas you might consider trying with students In this post, I’m sharing a little about my session and some ideas you might consider trying with students.

Creating Art with Google Drawings!

My session was entitled: Creating Art with Google Drawings! The goal was to offer teachers the opportunity to play with Drawings, to share ideas with one another, and to consider what they might take back to their classrooms to try with students. 

I started off the session with an overview of Google Drawings and its features. I shared a cheat sheet that could be used to further familiarize oneself with the tool. From there, we jumped into using Drawings and had some fun with it.

Creating a Picture Using Shapes

Math is all around us and why not learn about shapes while working on art? After all, shape is one of the elements of art. I shared a few books that I have used over the years to help students learn about and identify shapes in the real world:

From there, participants were tasked with using 3 or more shapes to create a picture. They were also asked to label the shapes in their picture. I created a simple landscape but it was really incredible to see how creative participants were and the images they created.

This video shares how you can make a colour block landscape if you are interested in trying out a similar activity with students. 

Creating a Mosaic

Mosaics are found all around the world. From mosques and murals to stairs and fountains, mosaics have served as a means to beautify a space and also to tell stories. I shared a few with participants to get us thinking about mosaics around the world.

  • Vietnam – The Ceramic Mosaic Mural
  • Iran – Shah Cheragh Holy Shrine
  • Switzerland – Mosaik Brunnen
  • Brazil – Selarón Steps 
  • South Africa – Piazza Mosaic

It was no easy feat and yet participants were ready to go and worked towards creating their own mosaics. Some chose birds and flowers while others chose rainbows and butterflies. Zooming in and becoming very familiar with Polyline, participants worked their way to creating incredible masterpieces. Here’s a video that walks you through the process if you are interested in trying it out for yourself or working on mosaics with students. 

Google Drawings is the ultimate blank canvas and an incredible tool for creation. During the conference, I had a great time working with incredible teachers and creating masterpieces using Drawings. If you haven’t attended in the past, please look out for next year’s ICT conference. It’s hands-on, and lots of fun, and hopefully, you walk away with a few things to try with students. Even though I was facilitating this year, our discussions led me to consider other ideas for creation with students.

Arianna Lambert Modern Learning, Music, Science, Technology

Infusing Tech in Music & Science

Computer Science Education Week is a little over a month away – December 4th to 10th, 2023. During this week, teachers around the world hope to inspire students to learn about Computer Science. While the learning is not limited to this week alone, many take advantage of some of the newer activities released around this time to create a buzz in their classrooms around computer science and coding in particular. In this post, I’m sharing about 2 applications that I’m considering using with students that infuse tech in some of the subject areas that I teach. I’m not sure how new they are but they’re new to me. 

Project Beats

I’m teaching a bit of everything this year, which includes music. I’m always interested in considering how I might incorporate tech into the music class and was really excited when I came across Project Beats. As part of Code.org’s incubator, Project Beats is a program that allows people to mix, remix and perform music with code. The incubator is where you get the chance to try new things inside Code.org, and while there are sometimes glitches, I’m pretty excited about the possibilities of this one. One issue is that in order to save my work, I have to be signed into my account. Using a third-party app has its challenges in terms of privacy but I would really love to test it out with students and see what they might like to create, even if we can’t save our work online. Perhaps part of our learning would be to note our code so that in a subsequent class, we might be able to pick up where we left off. 

Similar to other block-based coding applications, in order to create a song, you simply add blocks to the “when run” block and the possibilities are endless. Choose from a variety of beats to either play on their own, together or sequentially. You can also add drums or play notes from a piano, bass or synthesizer. 

While we might start out exploring the application, I think it might be a great way for students to create for a specific audience. Perhaps they can use the music they create to describe the specific feeling or mood in a story or book. I haven’t figured out yet how we might use it but I’m certain it will come to me the closer we get to December.

 

Minecraft Education – Reinventing Cities

For the last number of years, Minecraft Education has released an Hour of Code challenge around CSEd Week. I haven’t seen one as of yet but while looking through the different challenges, I came across the Reinventing Cities Challenge and it got me thinking about one of the projects that I am helping out with, in a grade 5/6 classroom for their Science unit. The class is a part of a Design Challenge based on sustainability. The students have started to create sustainable homes and will be working towards creating a sustainable town. Basically, they’re creating a physical version of a similar project that students around the world are doing virtually in Minecraft – Reinventing Cities. I think it would be really neat to see what this class might create given the chance to use a tech tool like Minecraft Education. 

Teachers can access a downloadable toolkit that supports learning about their particular region and ways in which to build sustainably. While the project might go on a little longer than we may have planned, I think there will be some students who will really jump on it and may possibly work towards creating during their own time. 

These are just a couple of ideas I have for infusing tech in Music and Science, both for CSEd Week and beyond. In what ways might you be celebrating CSEd week this year?

Arianna Lambert Digital Citizenship, Literacy, Media Literacy, Technology

Media Literacy & Digital Citizenship Resources

I love it when a good plan comes together. I’m currently taking my Teacher-Librarian AQ and was recently tasked with creating a Digital Toolkit with resources for Digital Literacy. Considering October marks Media Literacy Week and Digital Citizenship Day, I thought it was serendipitous as it gave me the opportunity to reflect on past tools that I have used with students and consider what else I might use. In this post, I’m sharing the resource and a few other ideas that we might use with students. 

My Digital Toolkit

By no means is this an extensive list. I tried to get a few different types of resources to include in the toolkit – digital, books and a video. I also tried to include information for teachers and students. Click on the image below and you will be able to access a PDF version of the file. The links are live and will take you to the resource. 

Additional Resources

Listed below are a few other resources that I found particularly helpful when reflecting on activities I wanted to try with my students. Please check them out!

TDSB’s Digital Citizenship and Cyber Safety Guide – Resources for different panels of students and educators. Many include resources we have access to through the TDSB Virtual Library.

Lego Build and Talk – Great conversation starters for families around Digital Citizenship.  Lego Gloom Busters is an online activity to help children learn about online safety. Lego Doom the Gloom is an interactive experience to build online safety skills.  Lego Smart Dash is an online game to teach children how to make the internet a safer place.

PBS Learning Media – Digital Citizenship Lessons for a variety of grades

Media Smarts – Media Literacy 101 – Simple videos that support students in learning the key concepts of Media Literacy. Videos include a question or challenge at the end for students to consider what they have learned and/or a real-life application. 

While we’re close to saying goodbye to October, there’s an ongoing need for students to further develop their Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship skills. I hope that you may have found something new or useful to use with your students.

Arianna Lambert Technology, The Arts, Year End Activities

Pixel Art

As the final days of school wound down, junior students learned about pixels – minute areas of illumination on a display screen, together composing an image. Using a template, they created their own designs and also tried to create designs of popular images of characters and other imagery from video games they played. 

How It Works

The template is a Google Sheet that uses conditional formatting and has re-sized cells that appear as squares. Due to the conditional formatting, users can type a specific number into any of the square-shaped cells and depending on the value, the cell will change colour: 0 = gray; 1 = red; 2 = orange; 3 = yellow; 4 = green; 5 = blue; 6 = purple; 7 = pink; 8 = brown; and 9 = black. Alternatively, students can use the fill colour feature that allows them to pick the colour they would like for each cell. 

Taking Time & Planning

While the task seemed simple enough, it was interesting to see how many students had to reset or restart their designs because they failed to plan and jumped right in, quickly changing the colour of their “pixels” without truly mapping out how their image would unfold. Many said the task was so easy and yet when it came down to actually creating their design, they realized that some planning would be needed. Those who were most successful took time to plan their canvas considering the number of squares that they would need. Some students also quickly learned that they could also add columns and rows in order to fix sizing issues along the way.

Images as a Guide

A few students started looking up images created using pixel art to get ideas of what to make and decided to copy and paste them into their Google Sheet for reference as they began.  This caused quite the controversy as some students thought that others were cheating. We then had conversations about how we use information in the classroom to help in our learning and that using an image as a guide might be similar for many. We also had conversations around copywritten images and citing the sources of works of art, encouraging students to create their own works.

Proud to Showcase Our Work

The concentration and effort that went into creating designs were wonderful to watch. As students got down to work, there were moments when you could hear a pin drop in the room. They were focused. When it came time to share their work with others, it was incredible to see how proud students were to share what they had created. Some students were teaching others to create designs like theirs and walked them through the process. 

All-in-all pixel art was a great activity that got the creative juices flowing as we wound down the year.

Arianna Lambert Professional Learning and Growth, Technology

ETFO’s Summer Academy Is Coming Soon!

Summer is almost here! Well… we still have a month to go and yet, I’m hard at work thinking about my summer learning. Did you know that ETFO’s Summer Academy is happening once again this year? With over 30 in-person and virtual courses being offered this summer, there’s bound to be something that will pique your interest and might serve as an opportunity for some great professional learning. In the past, I’ve had the privilege of facilitating as well as supporting presenters as a Technology Moderator and this year is no different. 

In this post, I’m sharing a bit about what I have planned for participants in our 3-day course entitled: From Consumption to Creation: Tech Tools in the Classroom. From watching videos on Youtube to reading e-books online, technology is a major part of the lives of many students. And they love it! Why not provide students with the tools to move from being content consumers to content creators? Your students are ready and eager to create. From short films and infographics to portfolios and slide presentations, the possibilities are endless for real-world uses of technology within the classroom. In this session, participants will learn some of the tools that will inspire students to get creative. We will explore Adobe Spark, Scratch and Google Suite for Education Tools.

Day 1

We’re jumping into G-Suite Tools and thinking of fun ways to use the tools to create and collaborate. From Math Talks to choose your own adventure stories, participants will explore how they might support students in sharing their own thoughts and ideas in creative ways. 

Day 2

There’s so much that you can create using  Google Sites and Drawings. Day 2 is all about playing around and creating something new that can use used on the first day of school in September. While we might not be thinking that far ahead yet, participants will have the time to prepare and share ideas so that they can hit the ground running come September. 

Day 3

It’s all about coding in Scratch and creating short videos in Adobe Express. Participants will explore how to use these tools to help support students in coding and using their voices for change. 

Registration is opening soon and you don’t want to miss out on some exciting courses that will not only serve as great learning but can also serve as an opportunity to meet great educators – with similar interests – from across the province. I hope that you will be able to join this year’s Summer Academy! Wishing you all the best as you gear up for the last month of the school year.

Arianna Lambert FSL, Student wellbeing, Technology

Incorporating Tech in FSL Presentations

Presentations are always challenging, even for the best presenters. While we might feel as though we’re ready to go, sometimes in the minutes right before we are set to “take the stage”,  our nerves get the best of us and in those moments, it’s difficult for us to do as well as we would like.  If this is how we might feel as adults, I wonder how much more this might impact our students. In particular, I’m thinking of my French as a Second Language students and how we might use technology to support student presentations. 

This year, I am teaching French as a Second Language (FSL) to grade 4 students.  The class is a grade 3/4 split, so we have a small group of 9 students, many of whom are eager to learn and are growing in their confidence in speaking the language with each other. As we continue to work on pronunciation and speaking, students perform short presentations as a part of the culminating activity for our units. 

This past week, we finished our unit on clothing and students were tasked with creating a fashion show. As part of their fashion show, they were asked to make sure that they described at least 3 outfits, including the colour of each item within the outfit. Some students worked to create fashion shows in Scratch while others used Google Slides. In both instances, many students took the time to practice and record themselves so that they could just press play when it came time to present. More and more, I’m realizing the importance of giving students options when it comes to presenting so that they are able to show what they are capable of producing without the added stress of having to “present” in front of their peers and the teacher.  Because students were able to record their presentations ahead of time, some of the more reluctant students were eager to be first in presenting. 

As I continue to work with students, I’m eager to uncover additional ways in which to remove barriers to them showing what they know and are learning. By simply incorporating the option to record ahead of time, students had the time to practice and when confident, finalize their recordings and insert them in their projects. I’m eager to discover more ways in supporting students in sharing their learning and perhaps reframing what it means to present. 

Arianna Lambert Climate Change, Coding, Global Warming, Inspiring Students, Literacy, STEM, Technology

Scratching the Pollution in Our Oceans

Last year I blogged about a new book – The Global Ocean. This past month we were lucky to have a virtual visit with the author, Rochelle Strauss. Rochelle gave students context on the importance of her book and read passages in order to support students in understanding the need for immediate actions for change. Students had the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about how the actions of each of us can have a significant impact on the environment, and ultimately our world.  There we a number of students who had questions and based on our visit, one student said that he was inspired to think about his passions and how he might use writing to share that with the world. It was a great visit and our learning didn’t stop there.

During our visit, students learned more about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and were eager to find out how that much garbage got into the oceans in the first place. Students researched about causes and also learned about the work being done to clean up the oceans. During our visit, we learned about the Turtle Extruder and one student was particularly interested in how people who fish might use different kinds of nets so as to be more responsible when fishing. 

This term, students are furthering their knowledge of coding and are specifically learning to use Scratch. As part of our action to raise greater awareness, students were tasked with creating a story, PSA, or game in Scratch that they could share with others about what they learned. Some students were excited to remix an existing catch game, changing the sprites and adding additional text to share their learning. Other students were excited to use the program to create stories to inspire others to learn in an interactive way.  Projects were due last week and yet there are still some students who are eagerly wanting to add more information to their projects, so their work is ongoing. 

This entire experience reminded me of the importance of purposeful uses of technology. While we could have spent time learning about the different blocks in Scratch, I think this activity allowed students to learn how to use blocks in an authentic way. If they wanted their sprite to do something specifically, they learned about how they might use specific blocks to achieve the task.  Students learned how to effectively use the blocks in their code because they had a purpose for learning how to use them. They were also able to share how they used the code to perform different tasks with others, allowing them to be “the experts” in the room. 

Last year I found a great picture book that spoke to the urgency of protecting our oceans. Little did I know that a year later, students would have the opportunity to hear from the author, get inspired, and then share their learning with others in a creative way. What a great journey!

Arianna Lambert Literacy, Technology

From Consumption to Creation – Media Literacy

Over the while, I’ve noticed that content creators are getting younger and younger. While many of our students are consuming media, many are also creating on a variety of platforms, often in their spare time. Keeping this in mind, I’m realizing more and more that my media lessons of creating a poster or a cereal box also need to evolve. While there is still value in these lessons, this year, I’ve been trying to see how I can support students in using technology tools that are board approved to extend these lessons. One tool that I have found great success in using this year is Adobe Express. In this post, I’m sharing what we’ve been working on and how I’m hoping to support students in creating media connected to curricular areas.

Media is all around us. Simply put, media can be described as words, images, graphics and/or sounds working together to convey a message to the reader. When teaching Media Literacy, I often start off by having students identify the purpose, meaning and audience for a text. Almost every time, I start off with print media which is probably something that I could expand on since there are so many different forms of media. We often do move into commercials. From there, we often create a list of conventions and techniques associated with media and how they are used to create meaning. Finally, students often are asked to demonstrate their learning by creating their own media work; speaking to the specific conventions and techniques they have used. 

This year, I had students design a new menu item for a fast-food restaurant. The item had to be something that would be appealing to a specific audience and would have to be in line with the identity of that specific restaurant, but elevating its existing offerings. Some students picked well-known fast food places in our school community, while others chose local less-known places where they enjoyed meals with their families. They designed their menu items and then we jumped into Adobe Express to learn about how they could create a short commercial, pitching their item. The idea of being able to create their own short commercial took the activity to a whole new level of excitement. Once I helped students to log in and showed them a couple of features, they were off to the races. With limited tech, we’re taking turns and have used it as an opportunity to get feedback from peers.

The results so far have been incredible. Students have added sound effects and some tried to create their own music to add to their commercials. All of the images they have used have been their own creations and some have even worked on creating clay images to represent their food. Many of their commercials have far exceeded my expectations and it’s been a pleasant surprise. While there has been great value in my lessons of the past with posters and cereal boxes, this has been a reminder of how extending this work and using tech can really spark some great ideas that far exceed my expectations. While students enjoy consuming media, they’re really excited to create and share with others.

Arianna Lambert 21st Century Learning, Coding, Kindergarten, Math, STEM, Technology, The Global Competencies

Computer Science Education Week

The beginning of December marked Computer Science Education Week. It was our chance to continue deepening our Computational Thinking skills with unplugged and online activities. The kindergarten students were learning to communicate an understanding of basic spatial relationships while students in grades 1 to 5 were learning to solve problems and create computational representations of mathematical situations using coding concepts and skills. 

Throughout the year, kindergarten students have been learning to communicate basic spatial relationships – on top, beside, to the left of, to the right of, ahead, etc.  They’re picking it up quickly and that helped us when we started working on our Lego Mazes. Students started by building their mazes on Lego Baseplates and then used the arrows to help move their minifigures from the start to the end of the maze. Some groups realized that there were different ways to make their way through. Having this practice proved helpful when they had the opportunity to try a couple of online activities – Code Monkey Junior and Beaver Achiever. 

The grade 1s and 2s were pretty curious about the Lego Mazes and tried their hand at using the arrows to move their way through the mazes that the kindergarten students created. It took some practice but in groups, they were able to get the job done. Next, using images on a grid, students were tasked with coding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They had to consider the steps that are involved in creating the sandwich and then determine the sequence of events as they moved from one place to the next, gathering the materials and making their sandwich. This practice was also helpful for them for their online activities – Code Monkey Junior and Beaver Achiever. 

The grades 3, 4, and 5 students were all about solving problems in Minecraft using code.org and Minecraft for Education. Starting out in code.org gave students the opportunity to have some guided practice and when it came time to work in the Minecraft for Education space, those skills came in handy as students coded their way to escape the mysterious mansion. It was great to see students collaborating with each other and finding different ways of coding their way out of challenges. I found it particularly interesting that there were some students that were able to catch mistakes in the code of their peers even before running it. The opportunity to debug the code in Minecraft for Education was really great for some to see how changing small things could result in big changes overall. 

I’m still working on ways of helping students to explicitly understand computational skills – algorithmic thinking, abstraction, decomposition, generalizing and patterns, evaluation, and logic. While Computer Science Education Week only lasts one week in the year, we’re excited that the learning is ongoing and that the skills we are learning are transferable to other subject areas as we consider ways of solving problems.

Arianna Lambert Constant Learning, Literacy, Modern Learning, Resources, self reflection, Technology, Use of Technology

Pausing and Teaching for Deeper Learning

Have you ever created an assignment or activity only to realize that you need to take a few steps back to do a bit more teaching? This month I found myself once again in this position. I love it because just as we ask our students to be reflective, we as teachers have the chance to do the same. It’s in these moments of reflection that I find better ways of teaching something or supporting students in deeper learning. 

For the last few months, I’ve been working on a design project with students. We started by working on identifying problems; picking one and telling the story of our problem by answering the 5Ws and how. From there, students had the opportunity to focus on a specific user so that they could create a new and innovative solution for that type of person. After coming up with great ideas, students determined the solution that they wanted to work on, storyboarded their solutions and got feedback from peers. As a part of our work, I always believe in the importance of having students share their ideas with authentic audiences and they do this through pitches. Throughout the process, there has been lots of learning and this point was no different. To do our pitches, we are using Google Slides. I realized that as much online learning as we have done over the years, students needed some teaching on how to insert pictures and how to change the font size. When the questions started coming in, I quickly realized that we were a little in over our heads. I wasn’t expecting this. 

We’ve taken a pause and have been working through a Google Slides Scavenger Hunt that was adapted from one created by Caitlin Tucker a few years ago. 

As we’re going through, students are working in partners trying to solve each challenge and are learning some of the basics of Google Slides. We’re taking our time, making sure that we understand how to do each of the tasks so that when it comes time to go back to our pitches, we can easily add pictures and text that will appeal to our audience.

With everything that we feel we have to “get through”, this has been a great reminder of taking the time to pause and explicitly teach so that students can successfully complete a task. I’m certain that after the scavenger hunt there will be things that we might forget about using Google Slides but I do know that with a few simple reminders, students will feel more successful in using the tool to share their innovative solutions with the world. More often than not, our pauses lead to deeper learning.