2009 Student Led Conferences

Student-led Conferences have been a staple of Manitoba Education for over a decade. It is a valuable experience for parents. Student-led conferences put the student in the drivers seat. They show their parents a portfolio of their work that shows how they have grown as a learner. I love student-led conferences. Students and parents interacting about learning. Think of these conferences as intensive dinner conversation answering the question, "What did you do in school today?"

Dinner Table
http://www.flickr.com/photos/niinac/2873854975/

Participation in Student-led conferences are higher than in traditional parent-teacher interviews. Students enjoy showing their learning to their parents. Parents enjoy seeing what their students have done. Many more parents are able to attend Student-led conferences because of the flexible timetable. We provide access to the school and the parent and child pick the 30 to 60 minute slots that they need. Often we will see up to 90% of the parents on these nights.

For the Grade 8 students they have created Electronic Portfolios to showcase their work and learning. This provides flexibility for parents. Those who cannot come into the school have access to the portfolio at home. Now these conferences are available to all students. Having access available to parents at home is important because many of the parents at our school work shift work or multiple jobs and freeing themselves up for up to three hours if they have more than one student is hard. Believe me I know with three children of my own.

The conferences are over and 24 of the 35 students attended from my home room. Overall we had over 110 students attend out of 145. The remaining students will receive a letter home explaining the student led process to parents. Students will participate at home and bring back confirmation to us that the conference took place.

Now to finish the year and prepare for next year. A job well done.

Windows to the World

A fun evening of Cheesies and Licorice Nibs was had by all listening to some of the greatest edutecnologists around. Ben Hazzard, Lisa Kolb, Rodd Lucier, Ryan M, Clarence Fisher and others all skyped into a room of eager and raw teachers. Now by room I mean at least there were 20ish of us. But hey we had twice as many people in the ustream chat room.

It was a nice culminating event of the rant that I had a few weeks ago. Following that rant Andy and Darren met me for a coffee. From that conversation Windows to the World was born. I would like to thank John Evans and Andy for working so hard to make things work out.


Here are some of the tweets using the #wttw.


For the people in the room it was nice for me to see some new faces. I set up a wiki for Manitoba teachers who use twitter. I called it http://mbteacherswhotweet.wikispaces.com. It is the same idea as the terrific pbwiki twitter4teachers You will find all of the participants from the f2f listed there. Also at this wiki you will find the chat log from the ustream.

I still find it amazing that an evening like this will bring together over 40 people in the ustream chat room and in a city of 700 000 people and a gazillion teachers we are only able to find about 20 to partake in the evening. I personally tried to get 5 people to come to the evening. None showed up. Some had legitimate excuses but still one would think that learning and experiencing this Koolaid is important to teachers today.

I have not stopped trying but it is getting frustrating when so few care about changing their pedagogy. I guess I will wrap myself up in the fuzzy blanket of happiness that is my PLN and the knowledge that WE get it. Thanks Andy, John, Darren, Ryan and Clarence for joining me in understanding the importance of what we do for the future of education.

Kids get it, we get it...... when will THEY get it. A Monty Python song comes to mind



Something about Always looking on the bright side of life!!

I love my students Part 2

This is how it all started

This is too cool. I am here Windows to the World and I have a student chatting with me. This is a true story. Really it is. I am not making it up.

Student: Harbeck!

8:17 PM me: Hey

Liem: I have a really cool idea

8:18 PM me: Ok what!!

Student: http://www.youtube.com/user/NationalGeographic

I was wondering if we compose a letter of everybodies ideas to make our community a Greener PLACE

8:19 PM theres a prize for $20,000 but i don't know this could be fun

me: Hey yeah lets do it and talk about it

8:20 PM Student: okay cool tomorrow?! in class.

8:21 PM me: Sure or before. YOu could make a blog post about it and post it. I would add it to all the other blogs. What do you think. Make a blog post and see if people want to do something!!

Student: Okay Yeah!

me: thx for learning

Student: haha, your welcome.

8:22 PM its cool, how your can take learning outside of school(:

Wow I get paid to teach these kids ;) Life is good


Here is the students post. I cross posted at the other student blog and the mathzone. Let us see what happens here.

A Post From Liem

The Green Effect!

Okay guys! I found this really cool idea! Its called the green effect.National Geographic with Sun Chips are joining forces to inspire people to make a change in their communities. We need to compose a letter to National Geographic of 250 words or less explaining what we can do to make our community a GREEENER place. The five best ideas will win $20,000 dollars to help make their community a greeener place.

Some ideas would be like making a garden, putting recycling boxes around parks, making our school more green and other stuff! Imagine if what we can do with $20,000 dollars to make our community more GREEN







For more information please visit http://greeneffect.nationalgeographic.com/
Online voters will choose one winner, and a panel of judges will select the remaining four.

I love my students

This is too cool. I am here Windows to the World and I have a student chatting with me. This is a true story. Really it is. I am not making it up.

Student: Harbeck!

8:17 PM me: Hey

Liem: I have a really cool idea

8:18 PM me: Ok what!!

Student: http://www.youtube.com/user/NationalGeographic

I was wondering if we compose a letter of everybodies ideas to make our community a Greener PLACE

8:19 PM theres a prize for $20,000 but i don't know this could be fun

me: Hey yeah lets do it and talk about it

8:20 PM Student: okay cool tomorrow?! in class.

8:21 PM me: Sure or before. YOu could make a blog post about it and post it. I would add it to all the other blogs. What do you think. Make a blog post and see if people want to do something!!

Student: Okay Yeah!

me: thx for learning

Student: haha, your welcome.

8:22 PM its cool, how your can take learning outside of school(:

Wow I get paid to teach these kids ;) Life is good

Examples for your movie project.

This is a cross post with the Mathzone. I will use these examples and another post that deals with creating storyboards and writing a script.

Public Service Announcements or PSAs are examples of movies and slidecasts that are similar to the movies I expect you to write. Please use these examples and find others help you create your movie. Remember to "Make a Difference"


Kids See Kids Do



Quit Smoking

During this video count all the factual points brought out. You will be amazed at how many were squeezed into this video.



Think about the script of this video. It is only 30 seconds but it packs a powerful punch in combination with the music and video footage.



Hmm How about some bottled water



Here are some slidecasts. They are powerful presentations with a voiceover and soundtrack. They can be powerful movies that make a difference.

MADD PSA

View more presentations from alyssamarie0x.

Food and Nutrition

Psa Fruits And Veggies

View more presentations from Biray .

Look at the use of text slides and images. Imagine if there was a script and voice!!

Canadian Seal Hunt PSA

View more presentations from bkind2animals.

A cool math video

This is a really cool math video. Not bad for 1 minute. What do you think. Thank you @courosa for tweeting about it.

On the Radio With Darren Part 2

It was a fabulous day yesterday talking with Darren, the host Richard Cloutier and his audience.

CJOB has the largest marketshare in Winnipeg so a guest spot on this station speaks to a wide audience. To hear the interview you can go to the Audio Vault and search March 31st 9 to 11 AM.

It is interesting to watch a radio show take place. All of the juggling the host has to do to stick to a time frame that allows the commercials to run, the information to be broadcast it was interesting to see.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

So there we were in the studio working twitter, the chatroom and interacting with callers and the host. Multitasking at its finest. THERE IS A WIKI WITH THE ENTIRE CHAT AND LINKS CAPTURED.

The night before the show I ventured into facebook where I rarely go. I put my status to online and started asking students questions. After doing this for a few minutes one of my former students told me to create a "note" and they could leave comments behind as their answer. Once again the student teaching the teacher. I created that note and some interesting results came in. 31 of my present or past students responded to the note and I thank them for giving me some really interesting information that I could share with the audience.

1. Are your parents on Facebook. If Yes are they part of your "Friends" and can see what you are doing?
22 students said that their parents were not on Facebook but 9 said that they were. Those 9 also had their parents as friends. Here were some of the responces from my students:

• yes they are on facebook, and my mom is my friend but I'm not going to add my dad lol
• No, but my mom uses my facebook, so basically yes she does see my profile and stuff I do and say.
• No, my parents are not on Facebook, although other members of my family are.
• Yes, my parents are on facebook, and they are a part of my friends list, but on limited profile .. teehee. ONLY because when they could comment on my things, the ALWAYS did and it got kind of annoying.

When Richard asked the audience to call in 3 members called in all with 13 year old teenage daughters. All three were into Facebook, and all 3 parents were at a different level of interaction with their teens Facebook use. The conversation steered around how as a parent you can keep track of your teens online use. Google Alerts was one suggestion by Darren.

My conversation with students on Facebook also revealed some new infromation.
2. Do you use MSN still? Is Facebook a replacement for MSN especially the chat part?
All still use MSN because of the chat feature. It was unanimous that the FB Chat was not as good as the MSN. They also served 2 different purposes. MSN for communicating and FB for glitz.

I would of thought that MSN was obsolete. The kids all used it for the ease of chat and the speed at which you can communicate. At school this year there seems to be less "MSN" related incidents. I might be wrong but I have not noticed "rumbles" or the administration dealing with students who have aired their beefs on MSN.

I also asked my students this:
3. Do you hide your computer use from your parents.... Do they know what you do online!!
Most of the respondents did not hide their computer use from their parents. But I would guess that parents have not seen what they have been posting online. MSN still is a place to chat, FB is a place to have a space. Both are used for communication but the missing piece in all of this is the cellphone. As smartphones become evermore popular they will take over the computer as the tech tool of choice. Already kids use them more than computers and as they become technologically more advanced they will shift many activities from the computer to the phone? I would also hazard a guess that students and laptops will be roaming the house working where it is convenient now where the "family" computer is. The callers also mentioned that they watch their kids on the computer. They asked what was going on but do they "really" know? Unless parents and teachers actively participate in social media they do not understand about life online.

3 computers - 3 geeks Flickr Photo by Dr Phil

Perhaps the most interesting part of the show was talking about this clip from Youtube. David after the Dentist. At the time of this post it had 17.5 million views!

The conversation steered from "How could a parent do this" to "Who Cares" the video will die and its 15 minutes of fame will disappear.

Let's look at the 2 points of view. Darren did a good job at a recent post. David's father took the video to show his wife who was unable to attend the event. He posted it up on youtube not thinking that there would be a problem. The problem occured when the video went viral. One innocent event now multiple repercussions. What could the parent of done differently?

• choose a less popular site to post the video.
• not posted the video.

The list is endless. How is David going to deal with this later in life. Will he always be known as the "Dentist" kid? One of the analogies used on the show was to think about village life. Up until a few years ago the village where we lived in was different that what we live in today. Back then very few people knew about your life in the village. Your sphere of influence was spread by word of mouth or perhaps radio or tv. Now in the world of the internet the planet is the village. Everyone anywhere can have access to you and your digital identity. David and his trip to the dentist is know from Winnipeg to Timbukto.

Uttercasth Target Practice Flickr Image by doughaslam

How are our students treating their digital footprint. They post pictures, and videos and use language that some find inapproptiate. The students digital footprint was the last question I asked them to comment on in my Facebook note.
4. Are you worried about the footprint you are leaving behind at facebook... the language, the pictures etc? The mighty armour of youth. Everyone replied that they did not care about the digital footprint that they are leaving behind. They did not think that what they were doing had relevance in the world and their future self. I hope they are right. I can only continue tell then how do be better digital citizens and hope some of them hear what I am saying.

North Sea (Sankt Peter Ording) Germany Flickr Image by Paraflyer

It was a great day on the radio. Thank you Richard Cloutier for getting it. One of the few who do!!