Building Learning Communities

From cave walls to Facebook walls we have always embraced visual communication. Dual coding theory of cognition (Paivio, 1971), reiterates the importance of visual imagery in respect to our thinking processes - that in fact we need visual language in addition to verbal or text-based coding of stimuli. With the changing media landscape, our streams, memes, and zines have exploded with imagery, ushering in a need for visual literacy skills. We are quickly moving from images as decoration and augmentation to images as sole content and communication tool. We have some false beliefs about visual language - that it is equated with “art”, requiring “talent” from “creative types” - and therefore it is unfortunately often not overtly taught and practiced in schools. Technology has affected knowledge in such a way as to diminish the value of “raw” information and increase the value of sense-making, as well as chip away at attention spans, sparking a need for distillation of complex ideas. Images can essentialize the cumbersome in beautiful ways. They have a “stickiness” for the viewer and challenge the critical thinking of the creator.

This hands-on session will explore the “Whys” of visual literacy and offer participants an opportunity to tinker and play with:
iconography and metaphorical thinking
pictograms, “Shortology”, emoji, meme stories, and gifs
graphic design, graphic facilitation, infographics and sketchnotes
photography, cinemagrams (moving photos)
icon-based annotations and marginalia
using images to leverage CVs, social media, and presentations

We’ll experiment with ways to use visual language for personal knowledge management, amplification of knowledge and creative work, critical thinking, social interaction (conversation), and other forms of creative and intellectual expression.

Mozilla’s Doug Belshaw says that the “heart” of “digital literacies” is the Remix. Kirby Ferguson eloquently encouraged us in his TED talk to “Embrace the Remix”, because, as his enlightening documentary series reminds us, “everything is a remix”. Newspaper blackout artist and award-winning author Austin Kleon’s advice to budding creatives is to “Steal Like an Artist”, because “you are a mashup of what you let into your life”. Our students are engrossed in remix culture - they are the appropriation and recontextualization generation. Remix calls for knowledge and understanding, critical, higher-order, and design thinking, a variety of tech skills, and, frequently, collaboration and navigation in the greater media landscape. Most importantly a remix task offers students a chance to truly transform a work and create something unique - something that will contribute to their digital presence and legacy. This session is part pedagogical/philosophical and part participatory. Attendees will leave with a “goodie-bag” of resources and ideas as well as have the opportunity to develop, practice, and share several types of remix projects.

For this workshop I have developed an ever-growing G+ community to organize resources, and serve as a space for sharing participant work and continuing the conversation long after the conference has ended. The slide show offers a glimpse into the history of remix in the art world and its significance in our present media landscape. We’ll explore how different techniques of remix and mashup lend themselves to collaborative creativity and differentiation in the classroom. We’ll also look into the distinctions between “remix” and “rip-off” and discuss the ways in which to help work become transformative rather than mere copies. There will be some discussion of copyright reform, fair use, and creative commons as well. Philosophically we’ll look at the work of William Burroughs, Grandmaster Flash, and Andy Warhol as well as the more recent efforts of writer Austin Kleon, media theorist Henry Jenkins, MIT Media Lab Lifelong Kindergartener Mitch Resnick, documentary filmmaker Kirby Ferguson, and the online course DS106.

The workshop is peppered with a variety of hands-on activities, where we will use both digital and analogue tools and materials to create individual and collaborative projects. We will also play a version of “Disruptus”, a divergent thinking game that sharpens design-thinking skills. We’ll explore how social media in particular inspires recontextualization and re-imagining. And, in an era of ever-abbreviated communication, we’ll look at various ways to essentialize and synthesize into more minimalist, visual interpretations.

All participants should bring their own device and ideally have created a G+ profile as well as YouTube channel. It would also be extremely helpful to have a camera on one’s phone or the ability to take and upload images easily.

What does it mean to be the lead learner in your school(s)?
What concrete actions can a school leader take that directly improve student learning outcomes?
Risk and effort, rather than revealing inadequacies, are the key ingredients for growth. How does a school leader concretely model that?
This practical hands-on workshop will walk school & district leaders through many different ways they can throw a global spotlight on the excellent teaching & learning happening in their schools. We will also showcase & practice lightweight ways you can share your own professional growth as the lead learner in your school in ways that lead to improved student learning.
The belief that cherished ideas can be developed creates a passion for learning. What cherished ideas do we have about learning that we want to develop in our schools?

Before you come to the conference, take a picture of “people learning” in your school. No faces: hands only or an over the shoulder shot or faces that cannot be discerned. Bring that picture with you. The magic begins with you. ;-)

Bring your own laptop and/or tablet with you.

Why take time out for students to own the learning? You'll have time during this workshop to explore resources and plan for time in your classroom or school for students to pursue their passions. We'll figure out specific ways to tackle any obstacles together.
Participants will gain:
Ways to communicate to parents and administration reasons for trying Genius Hour
How to create time in the schedule
Resources to begin passion-based learning with students
How to assist students in choosing topics
How to keep track of student progress
Reflections and assessments for students
How to scaffold for reluctant learners

In this session we'll explore different lightweight ideas/activities you can implement in your classes tomorrow to leverage mobile (and stationary) technology to document student learning and foster reflective ways for students to share what they're learning. We won't just talk about them, we'll do them. Then we'll discuss how each of us might practically adapt these ideas in our own classrooms. Each practical activity will model ways in which the hard work involved is the thinking engendered in students while the technology is elegantly simple and easy to manage for teachers.

Basically, we'll have fun, play with practical ideas that allow teachers to easily incorporate technology in their classroom daily, and leverage some of the mobile technologies that are increasingly found in students' pockets. This session will be an accessible introduction to the fundamentals of using technology in the classroom.

“There is no win, there is no fail, there is only make” (John Cage). One of the greatest challenges is developing ideas, finding time, and offering opportunities for students work on creative projects. More importantly, how do we move beyond the “assignment” stage and encourage students to be intrinsically motivated to make beautiful things on a regular basis? How do we foster the shift from consumption to production? Even if you don’t have the luxury of offering a project-based curriculum, you can still develop a steady diet of ongoing, “back-burner” projects that gets student to “dare to make and share”. This session will explore ways to instill a creative culture in your classroom, with everything from low-entry point crowdsourced uses of social media to the #showyourwork movement which asks students to be overt about their design thinking, creative process, and troubleshooting and contribute to collective knowledge. At the heart of personalized learning is creative freedom, but students often need a spark of inspiration, a design brief, or mentorship to get them on the road to making. In this workshop we will get our creative juices flowing and explore trends in combinatorial and crowdsourced creativity facilitated by social media, as well as the role of analogue elements in digital makery. You will have the opportunity to create and perform, as well as develop projects for future use. We’ll look at teacher-as-creator and the importance of transparency and curation in facilitating creativity in the classroom. All participants will leave with a "goodie bag"- a membership to an ever-growing digital community of resources and dialogue centering around creativity in the classroom.

Makerspaces are popping up everywhere. They are bringing creativity, tinkering, exploring, fun, and a new voice to our young people and communities. With this maker movement, it also brings lots of questions, curiosity, and making of our own.

In this workshop, Shannon McClintock Miller will explore Makerspaces by looking at the what, why, where, and how of these amazing additions to any library, classroom and school. And the best part! We will transform our workshop room into a giant Makerspace for the afternoon to fully embrace what our students experience within these rich spaces.