Monday 6 June 2016

Reflections on Participating in #CraftReconciliation by Vickie Morgado


Vickie and her class were leaders throughout our collaboration this year. Check out her reflections on the project at her blog!

You can also find Vickie on Twitter - @vickiemorgado1
http://globalconnections2014.edublogs.org/2016/06/07/reflections-on-craftreconciliation/


We challenge all teachers, students, classes who participated to share and reflect on the project. You can blog here on this blog, or on your own blog like Vickie did.



Wednesday 1 June 2016

Check out Student Work!

Wow.

What a great collaboration. Since February participating classes have;

  • joined in 12 Google Hangouts on Air with each other over 4 months
  • participated in a Google Hangout on Air with Waubgeshig Rice 
  • wrote, read and responded to over 700 posts in our D2L online discussion forum
  • created video, images and audio to introduce themselves and share about their communities with each other 
  • defended what they felt to be 'the most important' Call to Action from the TRC and compared these with each other 
  • challenged each other to learn new lingo and understand what terms like 'unceded' means
  • read books along the theme reconciliation and shared reviews online using GoodReads
  • worked together in two separate MineCraft worlds to build their collective vision of reconciliation
      • Elementary (link to video overview of world coming soon!)
      • Secondary (link to video overview of world coming soon!)
  • posted an image, video, text or audio reflection in either our closed D2L online discussion or public galleries
  • posted thought and ideas on twitter using the tag #craftreconciliation 
  • created images with sayings to help break down stereotypes and shared these on twitter or our public gallery 
  • annotated reading material online using collaborative annotation tools - all around the them of reconciliation 
  • created murals combining both Indigenous and non-indigenous artistic styles to show working together 
  • designed and build dioramas to show the relationship between Indigenous and non-indigenous in the past, present and future 
  • wrote letters 
  • wrote news report to be turned into an eBook
One thing for sure can be said about our work together - the students owned this.

Thank you to the participating classes. I invite you all to post reflections and learning here on our blog at anytime. I've learned so much from all of you!


Wikwemikong Board of Education

Wikwemikong High School 

Grade 11 and 12 English - Julie Balen
Grade 10, 11 and 12 English - Caroline Black
Grade 10 Native Studies - Jessica Fellin

Wasse Abin Pontiac School

Grade 5-8 CoCurricular - Sue Griffen and Cathy Harley


Simcoe County District School Board

Orillia Secondary School 

Grade 11 Native Beliefs and Values - Sheena Penfold 

Nantyr Shores Secondary School 

Grade 10 History - Penny Chaiko

Midland Secondary School

Grade 10 History - Leslie Beckley
Grade 9 Geography - Scott Blake 

Twin Lakes Secondary School

Grade 10 History - Barry McCann

Penetanguishene Secondary School

Grade 9 English - Stacy Robitaille
Grade 9 Art and Grade 10 History - Shalleen Riley

Codrington Public School

Grade 7 - Todd Casselman

Upper Grand District School Board

Orangeville District Secondary School

Grade 11 Native Studies - Susie Chamberlain

Chippewas of Rama First Nation

Mnjikaning Kendaaswin Elementary School

Grade 7 - Jeff Cosco

Rainy River District School Board

Mine Centre Elementary School

Grade 6 - 8 - Jessica Sweigard

Peel Catholic District School Board

Grade 3 - Vickie Morgado

York Catholic District School board

Christ the King

Grade 6 - Robert Cannone


Peel District School Board

Grade 5 - Kerri Evershed

Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board 

St. Faustina Elementary School 

Grade 3 and 4 - Sylvia Vanaselja



Our Secondary Gallery
Our Elementary Gallery


An image of our closed, rich online discussion forum.

Monday 30 May 2016

May 30th 2016 - Google Hangouts on Air


Today we have our final Hangouts for classes who were collaborating together in Minecraft and our D2L (Brightspace) discussion forums. Will be exciting to hear what students have to say about the process.

You can see some student reflections in our gallery here.

You can also see our "Breaking Stereotypes Challenge" gallery here.

9:30 am Secondary Group 

 



10:30 am Elementary Group  

 

12:50 pm Secondary Group  


Thursday 12 May 2016

Breaking Down Stereotypes - New Challenge!


Please join us in this open challenge. We challenge all students to create an image that states an "action" that they do to help break down stereotypes as we work towards reconciliation.

You can use any tool you wish to create these images. One option for students over 13 is  www.canva.com. Most devices such as laptops and tablets have installed tools that can be used to edit images.

When done, please tweet your image with the tags #TRC and #CraftReconciliation.

Then, add your image to our public gallery here. To add the images to the gallery, you will have to create an account. For those not wanting to create an account please email your images to jcalder@scdsb.on.ca / jbalen@wbe-education.ca or tweet them tagging @jacbalen / @jaccalder. We will make sure they get added.


Here is an example


Friday 29 April 2016

Orangeville District SS - Plans for "Crafting"

Check out the amazing ideas that the students from Mrs. Chamberlain's (@SavingSusie) class at Orangeville District Secondary School have shared!

Follow the students work on twitter @namwayut @namwayut


Tuesday 26 April 2016

Wednesday 20 April 2016

Midland Secondary School - Building for Attiwapiskat in MineCraft


Last week, I had the opportunity to sit and chat with Leslie Beckley, English and History teacher at Midland Secondary School. She talked about how her class had spent much of the week following the news coming from AttawapiskatThis post and images of what the youth in Attawapiskat had listed as needs for their community had just been posted.

Today her students started building these things for the youth of Attawapiskat in our collaborative Minecraft world. While we all understand that this is a symbolic gesture to demonstrate youth supporting youth, the power is in the discussions surrounding their work. These ongoing discussions in Leslie's classroom will encourage students to consider many perspectives of extremely complex problems such as this. These are the types of complex problems the youth of today will have to deal with throughout their lives.



Monday 21 March 2016

Guest Speaker Waubgeshig Rice - April 20th 9:30 am


We are incredibly lucky to have booked Waubgeshig Rice through Passages Canada. He is a broadcast journalist and author from Wasauksing Ontario.

Waub Rice will be doing a Google Hangout On Air with our classes on April 20th at 9:30 am. We are very excited. Here is a quote from his email about our hangout,
"The focus of the discussion sounds great. I’d be more than happy to chat with the students about some of the important ideas around reconciliation. It goes well beyond just acknowledging some of the tragic facts of Canadian history." 

Resources:
Waubgeshig Rice's profile on Passages Canada
Waubgeshig Rice's profile on CBC 8th Fire



Thursday 25 February 2016

Older students helping younger students understand reconciliation


Check out this great conversation that started on twitter!

To put things into context, Mrs. Evershed's class is Grade 5 in Peel and Mrs. Balen's are secondary English classes at Wikwemikong High School.












Saturday 20 February 2016

Please help us choose a song for our Lip Dub Mash Up


One of the activities that students participating in our collaboration will do is a lip dub mash up. We will choose a song and each class will video themselves lip synching to the song. Then we will put all the videos into one video where each class is highlighted throughout the video.

We need help choosing a song! We are looking for a song that fits with the theme of reconciliation and empowers students.

Please make suggestions in the comments on this post by Thursday February 25th. We will then send the suggestions to our participating classes to vote.

Thanks for your help!

Friday 19 February 2016

English classes at Wikwemikong High School start their handshakes


One of the activities that students in our collaboration are completing is the creation of a virtual handshake. This may take the form of a video. Or, it could take the form of text, audio, image, etc. Students are posting their handshakes in our online discussion forum (a private area for safety, but we will share some student work publicly here too when we have their permission). 






Mrs. Evershed's class from PeelDSB - Puting their mark on the map!

What a great way to start to visualize where we are all from! Thanks for sharing this Mrs. Evershed's class.


Wednesday 17 February 2016

Power of Teacher Collaboration


Please check out the post on SCDSB 194 Days of Learning blog about the power of teacher collaboration and our #CraftReconciliation project.


#craftreconciliation: Behind the scene by Julie Balen




Please check out Julie Balen's blog post about teachers collaborating to support students in Wab Kinew's #craftreconciliation challenge. 


Monday 15 February 2016

Innovation needs an investment of time - Julie Balens Blog Post


As we head into the first week of #craftreconciliation Julie has shared her journey explaining the time and work it took to get to this point.