Connected Learner, Connected Learning, student voice

Learning With Passion

May 28, 2015 markwcarbone Leave a comment

Learn with passion. Follow your dreams. What could be better?

Earlier this week I had the privilege of seeing this in action at my school board. One of our students has always dreamed of working at a technology company – and specifically the Apple Store in this case. The student self initiated the process of how to prepare a resume, researched it, obtained feedback from his teacher and arranged delivery of his resume.

Now, you might think this sounds fairly typical at this point BUT, it is important to know that this particular student is 5!!! Here is a little excerpt from his resume.

Hats off to teacher Aaron Fewkes (@mrfewkes) and our local Apple Store team for pulling together a fabulous afternoon of passion based learning for our student Jack where he received a heartfelt greeting, met staff, toured behind the scenes and had a chance to experience and demonstrate the latest technology.

Aaron had arranged for Jack to skype with his class to share his experience live from the store.

With some collaborative teamwork with the onsite staff, Jack shares his experience.

You can also check out the storify version of the twitter action of #jacksbigday.

Make every day count: Learn with passion. Follow your dreams.

~Mark

EDUin30

EDUin30 teacher shoutout

May 18, 2015 markwcarbone Leave a comment

My #EDUin30 teacher shout out goes to Mr. Gwyn Beynon, who taught me from grade 8 through 13, then again at teacher’s college. So many great memories, learnings and connections. Thank you Gwyn for making such a difference in my life.

Just made it, officially in 30.9 seconds with a little editing!

~Mark

Connected Leader, Connected Learner, OSSEMOOC, Social Media

Beyond the Wall

May 16, 2015 markwcarbone Leave a comment

This week I came across an article about “hitting the wall” with social media (via social meda 🙂). I thought it was a good read, and it was certainly easy for me to relate this to many conversations I have had about the OSSEMOOC project.

Getting to the wall seems to be an all too familiar story, the “too” problem – takes too much time, too few characters, too many choices, too much online time, too hard to organize, too … well, you get the picture.

Yet, when people stick at it and get beyond these questions and concerns by finding connections, relevance and meaning, they don’t go back. Learn to channel information, improve meaning or context, contribute and balance time & work flow in new and more powerful ways.

There are some nice tips about setting realistic goals and pacing yourself. You can read the full article at social media today. Why not apply some of these tips to the 30 day program at OSSEMOOC (see sidebar).

Make your “wall experience” a journey,

a personal journey!!!

Perhaps you will find that your journey will have this result!

I have learned that getting connected does not take as much time as I thought. #ossemooc

— Cathy Harley, OCT (@Narodnia) May 11, 2015

~Mark

Connected Leader, Connected Learner, engagement, Leadership Perspective, ProfessionalLearning, SAMR, student voice, Technology Enabled Learning

Breadcrumbs and Ripples

May 8, 2015 markwcarbone Leave a comment

The 2015 WRDSB learning carousel day focused on Innovative Change was a great day of learning and connecting for me. I was impressed with the quality and quantity of the sharing sessions and loved the energy in the room. As a reflection, I wanted to share a few things that resonated with me by bringing together ideas from two conversations.

Each year, we have been purposeful about initiating targeted new projects to model change, inform our collective practice and leverage opportunities to share and role model. Some of our projects from the last few years are captured in this whiteboard ‘clip’.

Along this journey, we have learned some important items or “breadcrumbs” as I like to call them, that should be applied to new projects and scaling up strategies as we move our innovative change agenda forward.

Some of our breadcrumbs include:

learning IS messy. We need to accept this and continue to play in this space.
co-learning between teachers, and teachers & students is a really important element. It is OK to fail.
shifting writing from paper to digital spaces makes a difference
student voice and choice are motivators in the learning process
using technology as an enabler creates new possibilities to be explored in the context of the C’s and the SAMR model. Think about boundless and joyful learning.

In my view, as we look at a path forward, each of us has to own our piece of the collective through our own actions. I like the question, what is your next? Creating a culture where:

conversations of change and identifying entry points are ongoing and natural
we celebrate small steps forward with joy and encouragement
the process of nudge, encourage, give/have permission and expect is openly explored
we continue to be intentional and
we share our experiences in open and easy to access ways

are all important elements in sustaining the synergy and energy of forward movement.