Tuesday, May 7, 2013

IT Summit 2013 - Cool Tools Duel - Dean Shareski and Ewan McIntosh

The 2013 IT Summit in Saskatoon was capped off with a "Cool Tools Duel" between Dean Shareski and Ewan McIntosh.

Who will the winner be this year?

Tool #1:

Dean: Popcorn Maker - Create your own pop-up videos - https://popcorn.webmaker.org/

Ewan: P Clock (Presentation Clock App) - allows  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/presentation-clock/id391324914?mt=8 



Tool #2:

Dean: Haiku Deck - great presentation creation app using photos searchable from creative commons - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/haiku-deck/id536328724?mt=8

Ewan: My Script Calculator - helps students play with algebra and math https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/myscript-calculator/id578979413?mt=8 - WolframAlpha - look up historical data and data to get comparisons: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/wolframalpha/id334989259?mt=8 



Tool #3:

Dean: Twitter Archive of your tweets that is searchable - you can go in your settings and request your archive - twitter.com

Ewan: Earthlapse - lets you explore the universe as if you were in space - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/earthlapse/id522003167?mt=8



Tool #4:

Dean: Aurasma - let's you attach virtual reality overlay to your photo - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/aurasma/id432526396?mt=8

Ewan: 360 Panorama App - Create an tour of a room - https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/360-panorama/id377342622?mt=8



Tool #5:

Dean: Glympsehttp://www.glympse.com/

Ewan: Paper Fifty-Three Apphttps://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/paper-by-fiftythree/id506003812?mt=8



Tool #6:

Dean: instaGrokhttp://www.instagrok.com/

Ewan: Story Cube apphttps://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/rorys-story-cubes/id342808551?mt=8 Street Museum - http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Resources/app/you-are-here-app/noflash/no-flash.html Apps Gone Freehttp://appchronicles.com/category/apps-gone-free/





Monday, May 6, 2013

IT Summit 2013 - Presentation by the Thom Tech Catalyst Team

Today, I had the honour of presenting with some of my former colleagues from Thom Collegiate at the IT Summit 2013 in Saskatoon.

We spoke about how we learn, connect, collaborate and inspire each other as a professional learning community. We shared our experiences and numerous resources and tools about how we connect and inspire our students to achieve their very best.

IT Summit 2013 - Ewan McIntosh - Design Thinking: Developing a Generation of Problem Finders

Monday Morning Keynote - IT Summit 2013, Saskatoon

Ewan's blog: http://edu.blogs.com

Creativity... is it something we are born with or is it something we can learn?

Asked everyone to sketch their partner as a warm up. So much fun! There are some very talented wanna be artists at this conference this morning.

How to sketch a human head:


What defines quality teaching? What qualifies as quality learning? Wanted to find the perfect algorithm by trying to blend the best of the creative industry and the best from the classroom and blending them together to create perfect learning.

Students like respect when they take up the challenge and responsibility to collaborate and come up with common learning problems. Making learning real and relatable for them. That way they can take their learning and transfer them into their own learning and relate them to their own world and their own experiences.

In terms of real things, we can tap into our students' own creativity - use a I Wonder Wall where students and teachers can ask questions.

Curriculum mapping allows teachers to map out the curriculum and see where students are at and what they already learned and where they are going. Students can see why they are learning something and where they are going. It organizes thinking, allows for deeper understanding and really allows students to understand the why.

Problem Finders - you need to find a problem that no one has solved and try to solve it.

Making provocative titles - Seven Days to Save the Mill, Playtime is Cancelled, You are not on the list so you can't come in. These are then taken and mapped out with the curriculum to showcase thinking.

Students have difficulty asking higher order questions because they are rarely challenged to ask these questions - Googleable/Non Googleable (an unGoogleable curriculum)

What can we do to make learning relevant to students? The Why We are Learning This.

What is your process? design thinking - immersion - synthesis - ideation - prototyping - feedback

Can we make learning joyful?

John Hattie - "Know thy impact"