My thoughts went straight to a media unit on music videos, not only because I just started teaching it halfway through Course 4, but because it has COETAIL written all over it – starting right back at the beginning with Course 1.

I teach media to Grade 9 students and we have a very simple outcome for them – which is … students have to work together collaboratively to create a music video. The purpose of this is for our students to use a huge variety of cinematography techniques, nevermind the exposure that they will get to the following areas:

1. Movie editing
2. Sound editing
3. Lighting
4. Set Design
5. Using props
6. Time management
7. Working collaboratively
8. Character building through recognizing each other’s strengths
9. Acknowledging that they remix existing music videos (digital citizenship)

And this is just the beginning…

ISTE Enhancers

ISTE Enhancers are not something you take at the gym to get that extra rep, instead, they are like little breadcrumbs you can leave for students to find their way to creating something awesome and meaningful with technology. I have selected *one standard from each category in the ISTE Standards for Students and matched these to the learning goals; as well as the 6 Cs’ of Deep Learning to help form the goals for the unit. Furthermore, I have also linked them to every piece of technology that they will use in the unit; as well as linking it to which part of the SAMR model they adhere to.

*I have selected only one as I want the standards to become part of the students learning toolkit. I fear if I select too many, the standards will become too numerous and just melt into the background; which is fine, but I want to achieve something much greater and long-lasting. You could say I want to leave a legacy with this unit. I will make references to them throughout the unit, with the measure of success being students using the terms to describe their learning in a technology sense.I will outline how I think they will enhance students’ understanding of the content.

Empowered Learner – 1C

Using flip they can re-watch other people’s work. Giving and receiving feedback both inside and outside of the classroom.

Digital Citizen – 2C

As students are remixing existing artists’ work, it is important to acknowledge what copyright boundaries there are.

They will be communicating online throughout the project, and need to do so in a responsible manner. 

Students will be in a feedback loop for most of the project with an allocated peer group. They need to be responsible, whilst maintaining honesty and integrity in their critiques.

Knowledge Constructor – 3A

They will need to research online how to carry out the following:

• Shoot cinematography techniques
• Using iMovie
• Record Sound
• Using GarageBand
• Use various hardware
• Using lighting effectively
• How to storyboard
• Use MS Teams
• Use collaborative features in Office 365/G Suite for education

Plan out their time schedule using Excel and a Gantt-style chart. Using the collaborative features within these spreadsheet programs they can adjust times accordingly.

Innovative Designer- 4A

Editing their movies to match the timing of the song; will involve a lot of trial and error. They will also have to present their project summaries using the Pecha Kucha style, focusing on resilience and how they overcame any problems during the three phases; pre-production, production, and post-production.

Creative Communicator – 6B

The Pecha Kucha style will really help the students document and reflect on the whole project. They also have the option to remix a current song and overlay that with a music video from the 1980s/1990s. 

Students will be using MS Teams/Google Hangouts to constantly communicate throughout the project, which can help document their progress.

Global Collaborator – 7B

Given that the music videos are subject to copyright, this will limit our audience from where we can get feedback on how to improve; limited to students on campus. But there are of course opportunities for our students to reach out to experts on general movie editing techniques and movie production – through the use of the video call feature in Teams or Hangouts.

Under the Influence

If COETAIL was a cocktail it would probably be a Long Island Ice Tea. Like the Long Island, it contains a lot, and packs a knock-out punch and if you have too many in a short space of time you will be left reeling for days with a headache. But, more importantly, when you are in the midst of the COETAIL binge it is exhilarating!

And what of the single biggest influence of COETAIL? Well, it is hard to pin down…However, I am somewhat addicted to the power of flip and the deep learning that it offers. However, COETAIL has been an awakening for me, like Neo in the Matrix. You see I love researching (students will be researching throughout the project) new things happening in technology, and then passing this wonderful new learning to my students and anyone else that will listen. My other two big takeaways would be:

1. Improving visual aids
   1. This will be used in the 20/20 presentation at the end of the project
2. Participatory Culture and Remixing
   1. Students are encouraged to add comments to the internal MS Stream channel that will be set up to host their videos
   2. Comments on Flipgrid
   3. The music video is a product of a remix

Concerns / Pedagogy / Skills & Attitudes / Outcomes

Concerns – My main concern for the unit is simply that I have already started it, and I don’t know how that will impact Course 5. It is due to the end mid-end of March, which I hope is enough time. I am also concerned with the students managing their time, particularly during the shooting and editing phase. For example, how will they shoot and set up the sets/props/lights and so on?

Pedagogy – Pedagogically I think it is sound. I have used the SAMR model initially to match to different apps used, but I will shift gears and actively use both TPack and the TIM Matrix frameworks further down the line. But, I have already used these to plan out the tasks ahead, at least in my head – if not on paper.

Skills & Attitudes – There is an abundance of skills that our students will be covering, which would have been a concern had we not put them into groups; they get to choose their groups as we want them to work beyond the classroom. Students will also have to dig deep into their resilience, critical thinking, and principled reserves. Resilience, as they will face constant challenges of getting each shot just right. Critical thinking, as critiquing each other’s work is a vital component of success. And principled/ (character) as they will need to work with each other constantly. They will learn a lot about each other in the days to come, and I am sure that will continue to be supportive of each other.

Outcomes – I want my students to have fun whilst learning, but I do want them to experience real learning. I want them to experience what it is like to fail and then get back up again. I want them to communicate their ideas succinctly so that each person on the team can contribute equally. And finally, I want them to build confidence within themselves – to believe that they can accomplish anything. 

It will be fascinating to see where our students will end up at the conclusion of this unit – like the dispersal of dandelion petals.

There are more resource links than Black Friday discount deals this week on COETAIL! Nevertheless, I managed to wade my way through them all, like grinding through levels in World of Warcraft, to come up with a coherent vision of how what it looks like in my practice, and how I might assess it.

Assessment is lagging way behind all of these new pedagogies – taken from A Rich Seam, so of course, it needs to change. Assessment tools are seemingly (quite) a few steps behind their popular cousin – pedagogy. When I worked in the UK the government* was so obsessed with measuring so-called learning data (GCSE results, value-added, SAT scores, etc) that it created an environment of teaching to the test. I do believe in setting high standards for myself and my students, but this was clearly to the detriment of deep learning. In the end, it was one of the (lesser) reasons why I left a country that I had taught in for 11 years – as I cared more about learning than results; much like the overwhelming number of teachers that I taught with over the years. *There is a trend now in the US of universities dropping SAT and ACT scores as part of the admissions process; The Washington Post.

Assess and Measure

So, how am I to assess and measure the (positive) impact of deep learning? To begin with, I will use the following quote, from A Rich Seam,  “Help students to become their own teachers. This will most certainly help them long after they have finished school! I do think this is even more important in international schools, given the transient population of those communities. Moreover, this quote is perfect for building autonomy in our students – but I should be aware of giving too much, which could hinder deep learning (Table 4: Effective vs. Ineffective New Pedagogies).

The key to this process is to build solid learning partnerships with students. Thankfully, as our school uses the MYP, we write our own units and can adapt the rubrics to suit those – therefore building up our assessment competency. 

In order to effectively assess I will co-create the rubric with students based on what the final product needs to do. Part of this assessment will, of course, cover the all-important content and creativity, it will also include releasing the product to the real world and measuring its success in that, uncontrolled environment. 

Deep Learning in Practice

Out of the different pedagogies and methods, I have used the following:

• Design thinking: I used this extensively during our school’s Grade 7 coding week when we asked students to create a language learning game using Scratch. It epitomized all the Phases laid out by Spencer – I created the learning process from my own experience as a Computer Science student many years ago. I have documented the week on a website that we shared with the students that week.
• Another example of design thinking would be in the current *media unit that I am co-teaching; students have to produce a music video. Here is a quick breakdown of the learning process, using the design thinking process:
  • Phase 1 = To build awareness we watched professional and student-created music videos. We build up a working knowledge of different cinematography techniques. 
  • Phase 2 = Interview students from Grade 10, to find out what went well and what could be improved. Analyze, in detail, a music video, to see how to use the cinematography techniques effectively.
  • Phase 3 = Plan and start to create the music video including:
    • Storyboarding
    • Props
    • Set design and location
    • Software and Hardware needed
    • Assigning roles;  strengthening partnerships within peer groups.
    • Editing
  • Phase 4 = Create a prototype of the video and get feedback on this form:
    • Peer groups
    • Other audience groups, students in other year groups, and beyond the school. 
  • Phase 5 = Highlight any issues and fix them. Repeat until satisfied with the end product. 
  • Repeat Phases 1-5 as necessary.

*Please note that this unit will serve as my Course 5 project.

• Challenge-Based Learning & Project-Based Learning; Students had to come up with a solution to real-world problems in the community i.e. how can we recycle more, or how can we create an AQI weather monitoring alert system, to inform students when the AQI reaches unhealthy levels for recess.

I also want to try out the Gameful Design process during this unit. For example, take rubric scores in the MYP. They are graded from 0-8, now as long as my students are aware of how to progress through the grades, they know what progress looks like – kind of like leveling up as it where. I will think very carefully about which elements of this I can incorporate into my Course 5 project. My favorite quote from the article by Kevin Bell is how the post-millennial generation (Gen Z?) is intrinsically motivated to engage with systems that are intentionally designed to be hard to not engage with! Just think about that statement for a moment…imagine tapping into that desire to interact from a learning perspective. It is simply bewildering.

Deep Learning & Partnerships

I have spent a lot of time building partnerships with my students, particularly when it comes to leading by example. Whenever I ask my students to do something new, first I model it for them – to build up trust. I think this is working well, as they see me as being more accessible. But this needs to go beyond the classroom. For example, I regularly go to after-school activities that I am not directly involved with. I go there because I want to go and celebrate the things my students are interested in! Admittedly I also go because I need photos for the yearbook; I share this point with my kids as well.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths: From the six core competencies of deep learning, I think that I promote collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and character, effectively in the classroom. I do this through small team-building exercises, cooperative learning structures, and group-led projects. For example:

• Round Robin – students sharing keywords on a given topic
• Quiz, quiz, trade – students answer a set of questions based on a topic
• Flipgrid – students work in groups to critique their peer’s work, and then work together to reflect on the feedback they received
• Learning resource – students creating a learning resource for their peers; in last week’s post

Weaknesses: I would like to strengthen both (global) citizenship and creativity in the classroom. In terms of citizenship, I want my media students to produce something that is much more in line with the global context of citizenship. Given the reality and negative impact we are having on our environment, I will get the students to create something meaningful that aligns with the message of doing something positive around climate change. Using some of the deep learning practices, I will first survey them to see the issues they are most concerned about. Doing this, it should prompt my students into thinking more creatively about how best to come up with a solution.

The possibilities are endless…and isn’t it just amazing to be part of this fantastic journey our kids are taking!

I feel that some of my students struggle to break out of the shallow waters of learning, and out into the deep! They might be afraid of feeling ashamed if they can’t complete a task, fear being judged for example, and therefore stay in the safe waters, where they can still touch the ground with their feet, without putting their heads below the water. However, it is up to us to create a safe learning environment, where our students are not afraid to explore the uncharted ocean of deep learning. It is up to us to teach our kids to get back up again after failure, and keep trying until they succeed!

I akin this process to the climactic act 3 scene from the movie Cast Away, when Tom Hank’s character fails over and over again to build a raft robust enough to make it past the breaking waves on the island on which he finds himself marooned. However, in the end, he succeeds, because he never gives up! And we will never give up on our students.

Harness the Educational Power of Technology

One of the most common ways to not harness both technology and powerful teaching strategies is in the area of collaboration. In these examples, it is common to see students excel at linking up the content and the technology, but they don’t make the all-too-important connection beyond it i.e. into deeper learning or how to link it pedagogically (TPACK). However, we can indeed harness the power of technology, as a servant, to accelerate learning through collaboration and knowledge creation.

An example of how I used technology to enhance collaboration and knowledge creation, happened three days ago. I was teaching a media lesson and we had to introduce over 15 cinematic techniques. We needed to do this in order to prepare our students with a working knowledge of key terms that they could use, both theoretically and practically, throughout the unit. The end goal is for our students to create a learning resource for a Grade 8 class, which will be studying something similar. We wanted to give our students the autonomy (from A Rich Seam) to choose what this resource, a movie, would look like.

Here is a breakdown of the task (linked to Paulo Freire’s Five Ideas for Dialogical Learning and 6 Powerful Strategies For Deeper Learning In Your Classroom):

1. We front-loaded the terms, with the help of some visual aids.
2. The students were given the task to create a 2-minute educational video. They were also informed that the target audience would be Grade 8 students, and how this might affect the movie they were making; encourage critical thinking.
3. We let the students choose which groups they would be in, to encourage working outside of the classroom; having hope and faith in them to work together. I believe that this demonstrates humility as we, the teachers, are putting ourselves out there by trusting our students to lead their own learning.
4. They then went out to shoot examples of different techniques, using smartphones and gimbals. They had the freedom to move around the school and take the shots and/or continue working over the weekend.
5. After they have collected all of the photo and video material, they will move on to the post-production phase and start editing their movies.
6. Once complete, they will upload the movies to FlipGrid at which point they will get feedback from their peers, Grade 9s, and Grade 8 students. *I will extend an invitation to the other schools we are working to encourage a global collaboration, and reach beyond our walls.
7. They will use this feedback to further enhance (critical thinking) their movies to ensure that they have adequately covered each of the cinematic techniques
8. Once the final product is made, each group will upload it to MS Stream and this will be used as a teaching resource when the time comes. Moreover, this acts to empower our students to not just become a community of learners but also a community of teachers.

Classroom Courage

The materials regarding courage remind me of a scene from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf and the gang are getting chased down by a Balrog, and Gandalf, fearing that they will not escape this beast, turns to face it and say “You shall not pass”. He slams down his staff on the bridge, which breaks with the Balrog in it, sending it to the abyss. Unfortunately, for Gandalf, the Balrog’s fiery whip catches him and drags him along for the ride. I love this scene as it demonstrates courage. Now I don’t have any magical items or mythical beasts in my teaching toolkit, but I do encourage my students to take risks.

At this minute this is in the form of flipped learning, using… Flipgrid; I don’t think a post will go by without me mentioning this app. Students videoing themselves in this learning environment really does take them out of their comfort zones, and I acknowledge it regularly with them. And, as mentioned in an earlier post, my co-teaching partner and I have also uploaded videos of ourselves carrying out similar learning tasks to show our own vulnerability. 

In her video on daring classrooms, Brene Brown uses the analogy of vulnerability and turtles without shells. I love this analogy, as it really helps to visualize what our learners are going through on a daily basis. I have seen shame prop up from time to time, in the form of peer judging, for example, finding amusement in someone else’s work or performance –  this could very easily be traumatic for a student and could push them back from taking risks. Regardless of academic ability or social acceptance, it is up to teachers to model risk-taking and empower our students to truly believe in themselves.

Content Creators

I think that the current topic of creating a media resource for the community ideally serves the interests of my students. All of my students have their own favorite YouTubers, and they consume content on a daily basis, from a multitude of topics. So the pedagogical question is “Why be a content consumer when you can become a content creator?”

I think allowing our students to create their own content, albeit for educational purposes, will enable them to see how deliberate the process must be. It will highlight the need to work collaboratively and interdependently in order to be efficient in what you do. It will encourage communication skills, through the resolution of disputes and how to move forward – together.  In fact, the reason why I created my YouTube channel, podcast, and this website was to light the way for my students.

Having said the above, I would like to provide the critical thinking aspects by more scaffolding when a student is giving feedback to the creator. Questions they could ask might be “what is the purpose of the video” or “can you name 3 examples of cinematic techniques”. I would also like to do more collaborative learning structures on how best to use the feedback in order to improve the product.

I am all too happy that we are driving the change, given that the destination is deeper learning; I just hope my passengers don’t ask me “are we there yet”, given the technology they have at their fingertips (Google/Apple Maps) I am sure they will be all too aware of OUR accelerated progress. Having said that, I have become somewhat of an educational architect and restructured a couple of learning experiences recently, with interesting results.

I run an after-school robotics club with sixteen Grade 6,7 and 8 students. We had to go over the least exciting part, I hid this bias from the students, and start our learning on the research project. I started by showing them an inspirational video of how the project might look in the real world. We then moved on to look at the official engineers’ notebook from FLL, to help come up with ideas. 

Once the students had enough information, I directed the students to work with someone else in their team to suggest a research project to work on – I picked students to work with another student that had FLL experience before, to try and find a balance and therefore work, somewhat, interdependently; to encourage deep learning as per the deep learning progression chart.  They then had to record their response using my beloved Flipgrid.

After they finished recording their video, I asked the students to watch someone else’s research project proposal and then comment on that. I also gave them the option of uploading the video after the club had finished, if they wanted to spend more time thinking about potential solutions. I believe that this worked really well, as the students were discussing each other’s projects, weighing up whether or not they would be successful.  

Global Collaboration

Moving on to going beyond the classroom, and making good on a promise I made in Course 4 Week 1, the realization of students sharing (using Flipgrid) their digital citizenship learning from DQ World to students at international schools in Cambodia and Hong Kong – finally came to fruition. I can’t tell you how awesome it was to see students from different nationalities, cultures, and ages sharing their top three tips for how they are upstanding digital citizens – and sharing this video! Some of my students came up to me during advisory to say how impressed they were with students from my old school in Cambodia saying how they used their digital citizenship skills. 

Even by producing the video, all of the students were practicing their digital citizenship skills by not revealing their names, or even using filters and emojis to censor their identity; which some did. It was a fantastic exercise in a far-reaching and real learning experience!

Learning Environment Change

I am not talking about climate change, although maybe I should be, what I’m talking about is creating an environment that empowers our students to embrace deep learning, and how I can shift my practice to accommodate this.

My 9th Graders will shortly begin a new unit, in which they have to create a music video; removing boundaries from school to the real world. I will match each task in Understanding Deeper Learning in The Deep Learning Planning Guide.

This Tuesday we will gather in the plaza and watch professional music videos as well as videos made by last year’s students. The purpose of watching the videos is to come up with a working vocabulary, related to examples, of cinematography, movie editing techniques, and so on. Rather than give the students the keywords and definitions, I will give the keywords, and then ask the students to match these to where they have been used throughout the various videos – mastery of core (subject) academic content. 

They will then need to use this new knowledge to start planning, storyboarding and eventually creating their own music videos (critical thinking and problem-solving), which they will do in predetermined groups. In fact, the first challenge that the groups will face will be to prepare an elevator pitch, a 20-30 second description of their music video (taken from 101 Things I Learned in Film School). This will serve them well as they will need to communicate succinctly what their intentions are; effective communication. The students must upload this task using Flipgrid, which we can not only share with the students within the class, but also with other media and film students in higher grades.

Groups

Groups will be selected* based on different competencies (some of which will be complex and without instructions), in order to create an interdependent working environment. For example, who will take the lead on cinematography, choreography, sound editing, and film editing? I will observe a lot at the beginning to nurture the move from limited to proficient – as laid out in the collaboration deep learning progression table. Furthermore, throughout the project, students will need to be self-directed in order to make the pre-production, production, and post-production phases of the music video; self-directed learning. They will keep track of their deadlines using Padlet, also good to share resources with each other. And they can use WeChat, Teams, and email to communicate throughout.

*I need to check my own invisible bias’s here when I choose the groups, being careful not to simply deny students to work with their friends; my bias could be that they might be that productive. However, it could catapult their performance as they may be more inclined to work together outside of school; social connections.

Finally, students will keep a journal of the whole process (OneNote, which I can add feedback to at any time), so that they can reflect on the struggles they had (including how they overcome them) and celebrate their victories; academic mindset.

I hope that all of the above will push our students to raise the achievement bar for themselves!

I have a simplistic but genuine attitude to my teaching practice which is to put the learners at the heart of what I put into practice. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this ethos, it is in need of a revamp after this week’s readings on learning partnerships and learning theories. I need to go much deeper and refine it. I will start by renovating how I define the relationships I have with my students, which have already started to undergo something of a change since teaching internationally.

Relationships in Partnerships

“Effective partnering is built on principles of equity, transparency, reciprocal accountability, and mutual benefit.” A Rich Seam, is a great starting point for me, as it covers a lot of areas that I can use to reflect more deeply on my own practice. It is also vital to get this part right as if there are any weaknesses here, the chance of it unraveling later can increase. 

When I look out of the window, this is how I see partnerships being built.

In my media class, students are nearing the end of their summative work, which will culminate in them having created a lifestyle magazine cover. We have been using Photoshop to do almost all of the editing for the magazine, and whilst I have used this extensively in the past, I have not used it much recently, so before the lesson in which I introduced it, I had to brush up on some of my skills. In fact, in that first lesson, rather than do a bunch of demonstrations on how to use photoshop, I instead asked my students to explore different areas of Photoshop, for example, to find out how to remove the background/what is a mask, what are layers and so on. This emphasis, in my opinion, resonated somewhat with – Situated Cognition (Shannon Doak), as it required each of the learners to have an active role in order for the cognition to take place.

During the lesson, I could see some students were struggling with some of the more technical aspects of photoshop, i.e. which tool to use to remove background pixels. So, I asked them to collectively write down 3 things that they would like me to find out how to do before the next lesson. I agreed that I would find two YouTube tutorials, that used different tools to do the same task (equity). Furthermore, I would test these out, write down a list of keywords and then share these before the lesson – all through the stream feature in ManageBac. At the time I did this because I want my students to succeed, but I didn’t want to do the work for them! I was also not afraid to admit to something I didn’t know (transparency), and I got to revise my Photoshop skills and learn something new along the way (mutual benefit). 

Inclusive

I was thinking about how to make some of my classroom activities and environments more inclusive, whilst harnessing the power of technology to speed up the cognitive process. In the same media class, as mentioned above, I had asked students to analyze a magazine cover, from another student at another school, using key concepts that we have covered in class! Instead of submitting a written analysis, students had to submit a video version using my current technology goto – Flipgrid. After submission, I gave each of the students written meaningful feedback, sent via email. 

Now when I look back, I think I missed an opportunity to build up a secure partnership with my students. Instead of emailing the feedback, I should have left them with video feedback instead (reciprocal accountability), as many students were uncomfortable with videoing themselves in the first place. I should have also asked my students to leave feedback for another student in the class as well – see table Table 1: The Emergent Roles of Teachers and Students in the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning

I do think, by showing that you are ready to carry out the same tasks you are asking your students (particularly those uncomfortable ones), it not only activates the learning, but it solidifies trust and strengthens partnerships.

Supporting Framework

I dare say that Michael Fullen, may have had a hand in developing the TPack learning framework in particular. His work is clearly cemented in redefining the word and practice of pedagogy, which is ubiquitous through the TPack framework. Particularly at the TPK when considering how technology can accelerate the learning process.

Fullen says in his video that the push for change is coming from students and teachers and that students are becoming liberated. I think this is clearly evidenced by the redefinition of tasks using technology, for example creating worlds in Minecraft or collaborating and communicating with students across the world using a variety of messaging and collaborative apps. Indeed I can draw a clear connection between when Fullen’s statement of “students are being liberated” and the Tedx talk by Scott McLeod on the amazing learning students are doing outside of the classroom.

Progression

Since Course 1, Week 5, my practice has deepened in three major areas, all of which use technology. These are reflection, feedback, and collaboration.

Reflection– I just re-read my Course 1 – Week 5 blog, and I had a flashback of using Padlet with my volleyball students so that they could write their goals for the season. I followed up with video tutorials and lessons where I would show them how to complete these skills. I have enhanced this with my current students using OneNote to record smart goals, on which I gave each audio feedback and we make reference to these at various check-ins throughout the year. 

Moving onto feedback…I have definitely deepened my understanding of how to give effective feedback. Apart from giving written feedback, I try to check in with every student in each lesson to give them feedback on their work; I was already doing this before, but now the key difference now is I ask the students what things would they like me to find out so we can make new discoveries together, in upcoming lessons. In addition to this, I have fully embraced students giving feedback to each other using Flipgrid – so they can keep coming back to it. This form of feedback has worked better for Grades 6 & 7 than it has for my 9th Grader; time will tell to see if this accelerates learning.

However, the area that I have developed the most since course 1 would be the amount of collaboration I do with other teachers that are not in the same building as me! The PLN I have developed online is just fantastic. Sometimes I just lurk on Twitter, read some amazing things other teachers are doing, and then use them in my class; and pass them on to other teachers! I also have regular meetings with 3 teachers in 3 different countries – just to touch base to see what new technologies they are using in the classroom. 

Shifting Sands of Pedagogy

My job involves providing meaningful ways in which to successfully integrate technology into lessons to enhance learning. I like to think of it as the shifting sands of pedagogy, and if you don’t shift quickly enough you might find yourself sinking into the quicksand.

I thought it would be novel to use the 6 C’s to show how I might shift in the coming weeks. 

Skill	Shift
Character Education	Continue to build meaningful relationships with students and families, for example, having a growth mindset, global context, and real international-mindedness.
Citizenship	Find out, through data collection, surveys, and interviews with students how to provide a meaningful digital citizenship curriculum. Focus on building and maintaining positive partnerships.
Collaboration	Students collaborate in class more regularly using technology, using apps/websites such as Google Slides, Weebly, and Word Online. Look for genuine opportunities to build partnerships with other schools both locally and internationally; at student and teacher levels.
Communication	Expand the ways in which students can choose to communicate their ideas, work, and how they interact with each other.
Creativity	Give students an even greater choice in the technology they can use to complete tasks. Providing more extracurricular activities for students to use technology to pursue their own interests,
Critical Thinking	Encourage problem-solving on a larger scale i.e. when working in groups.  Point students to use their resourcefulness and initiative.

The table above simply shows some examples of how I can shift my own practice. However, with any shift in my practice, I will keep the learners at the center of what I do, as well as have a reinforced vision of how to prepare them to be lifelong learners.