BLC18

How can visible thinking strategies transform classroom culture and create equitable, inclusive spaces for courageous conversations? Following the Unite the Right Rally in August, seventh and eighth graders at St. Anne’s-Belfield School in Charlottesville, Virginia, gathered in a student-directed, elective course to investigate the origins and legacy of the rally. Join us as we share our students’ quest for understanding. In this session we will model the routines embraced by our students, discuss and explore how these routines support and empower student voices, and generate ideas for how visible thinking routines might be used to spark, enrich, and sustain school-wide conversations.

This session is designed to present the rationale and major components of our global citizenship program. Below is a description of the program encompassing the essential elements. We are particularly proud of the partnership that we have developed between Central Berkshire Regional School District, the Berkshire Outdoor Center-Becket Chimney Corners YMCA, and Berkshire Adventures to create a cultural immersion program with young students from China.

The primary purpose of our global citizen partnership program is to develop students’ sense of global identity by increasing their cross cultural awareness. Each of the organizations in our triad partnership assumes a vital role in creating a well-rounded experience that is designed to increase students’ global identity. Visiting students from China, aged 9-13 years, are paired with American students in Central Berkshire Schools and experience both a school and a traditional camp-based setting. Central Berkshire ensures that Chinese students have ample time to experience typical days at school while at the same time building friendships with American students. Time spent at school focuses on American academic schooling. Students participate in all subjects including math, English, social studies, and science. Programming also includes physical education, 21st century skills, music, and art. The Berkshire Outdoor Center arranges students’ living quarters for both Chinese and American students so space and time is created during weekend and evening hours for students to continue to build relationships and learn about Chinese and American cultures- with guidance from experienced camp counselors. Both settings emphasize skills that foster curiosity, compassion, collaboration, courage and a commitment to learning about language, traditions, school, neighborhood and family. As a result of this collaboration, students develop deeper understandings about the concepts of expanding citizenship as members of a natural environment and school community. Lastly, our third partner, Berkshire Adventures serves as a liaison with China to assist us in recruiting students and communicating with schools and families from China to ensure a safe and rewarding experience.
Our program prioritizes skills that lead to global leadership. These competencies will be outlined in our presentation and described in greater detail. They are designed to foster students’ proficiency for participating in and contributing to a globalized society and include: thinking globally, communicating effectively, and contributing responsibly.
Thinking Globally
• Studying issues from a global perspective
• Gaining an appreciation for other world cultures
• Understanding world viewpoints
Communicating Effectively
• Developing foreign language skills
• Collaborating effectively with students from other cultures through communication
Contributing Responsibly
• Interacting and building relationships with students from other cultures
• Striving to become more knowledgeable about other cultures to develop values
• Showing respect and open mindedness in behavior and thinking

The ubiquity of handheld devices and learning media means that every educator (and student) makes daily choices in how to shape content. The prominence of visual stimuli places a heightened emphasis on the design of information. Explore the theories beneath visual scholarship, including illustrative examples and group exercises. Probe how cognition and perception can have real-world impacts on critical thought and creativity.

Sixty-five percent of people identify as visual learners. The brain processes optical inputs 60,000 times faster than text. Amid the contemporary world of smartphones, television, Internet, and video games, visual media undeniably dominate the input stream for life and learning. For teachers, therefore, thinking like a designer can change the way students engage with concepts and retain essential ideas. For students, tapping one's visual imagination to approach educational problems (whether historical, literary, mathematical, or scientific) can yield tremendous dividends in motivation and collaboration. If visual literacy is about learning to look, how to internalize and deconstruct the images that the brain sees (input), then visual thinking is about learning to design, how to imagine graphic representations based on the mind’s creation (output). Elements such as typography, color, layout, and pre-attentive attributes all elevate the value of handouts, charts, infographics, animations, and slides to engage students beyond linear learning. Via today’s technologies and media, the visual image can inspire thought and literacy in a range of design-based investigations.

How do visual thinking and visual literacy represent crucial tools in a contemporary teacher's toolbox? What are hands-on applications of visual design practices to enhance the value of learning materials and student creations? What resources and real-world examples can help educators craft rich learning tools for student engagement?

Whether in social media or toddler books, learning lives in a world of pictures. Most curricula, however, reinforce literacy in words yet seldom emphasize the skill of “reading pictures.” Parsing an image requires discrete analytical steps. Maps, cartoons, infographics and graphs all require training to negotiate subtleties of meaning. This workshop approaches design as a method of problem-solving. When a teacher creates a handout or PowerPoint, he or she makes explicit choices in emphasis, font, hue, layout and balance. He or she needs to consider purpose, audience and format.

Develop your own Sustainable Mars colony and practice using Minecraft. Complete tasks and learn first-hand how students use this virtual learning platform to research to communicate, critically analyse, collaborate and create, all the new 21st century learning skills.

Join us live on our server and complete the following activities:

• Learn to build
• Complete a scavenger hunt
• Explore previous projects
• Complete a Sculpture by the Sea Challenge

If they already have a normal Minecraft account (not an EDU account), and their own payed user account they will be fine and will not need an account from me.
All participants MUST have a laptop (no iPad) and Minecraft installed (link below). If they do not have a payed account I have 20 to give out.
https://minecraft.net/en-us/download/
 If you have never used Minecraft and are wondering what the fuss is all about, this session is for you.

The 2017 Horizon report acknowledges that significant challenges in implementing technology adoption in k-12 education is a lack of authentic learning experiences.

“STEM education refers to a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching that increases student interest in STEM related fields and improves students’ problem solving and critical analysis skills.” (National STEM School Education Council Strategy, 2015)

This presentation will discuss the benefits of authentic learning tasks and how Knox Grammar School is using Integrated Learning Tasks (ILAs) and STEAM, to provide students with an opportunity to see the synergy that exists between subjects and to realise their interconnectedness to real life experiences.

We will dive deep into the development and implementation of our Mission to Mars project, where teams developed a Mars sustainable colony. Areas of interest that will be covered include:

Why ILAs and STEM are a perfect fit
NASA video conference interactive session from the Johnson Space Centre
Integration of Mathematics, Science, English Technology (Scratch coding) and Language tasks into the project
Submission of a Mars Mission Entrance Exam (M.E.E.)
Building of the environment using Minecraft
Submission of a 3-minute video walk through of their completed environment. Click link for example of completed task https://youtu.be/Ya9Qlrct71g


Teachers will leave this session with all the resources required to complete or adapt the project for their school. Please note, Minecraft was not mandated for this task, it can ba adapted to other means of presenting your final product

The presentation will also focus briefly on a Year 9 Biomechanics STEM ILA and a Year 7 United Nations Sustainability ILA.

Creating videos and motion graphics nudges both students and teachers to blend a host of proficiencies. It involves visual design, just as it requires language skills of narration and storytelling. It supports technological skills in manipulating online media, and it reinforces the importance of publishing and sharing student creations. Kids teaching kids is the purest model of learning, and they become the educators of their peers.

Video production allows students to stitch together a narrative and storyboard each moment in the process that combines logical reasoning, cause-and-effect, and content mastery. They also must employ their graphicacy skills to fashion compelling visual displays. These quick-cut movies and short animations combine icons and text to communicate a message. Explainer videos are perfect for the classroom. They blend voice, image, and language into captivating presentations for students to learn. Content created using app editors or motion graphics provides a way for the brain to receive information through both the eyes and ears. Learning tools that can tap into both modalities have greater effectiveness in fostering understanding by adding layers of meaning. Teacher-produced videos can be terrific learning tools, but student-created videos are even richer. Creating multimedia videos and animations combine voice, images, and kinetic typography to internalize authentic understanding.

How does incorporating the use of visual media such as video, motion graphics, and animation promote student voice as activists? In what way does the design of multimedia enable them to develop a deeper understanding of the way media messages are constructed for maximum impact? How does video production empower students to teach others?

Using videos and animations encourage four key proficiencies in the visual design process including: Symbol and visual metaphor - Students choose images to pair with their explanations to foster an understanding of figurative meaning. Narration - They must unite each visual frame with a seamless spoken narrative to relate the core information of the story. Script - Students must select crisp words to highlight vocabulary while avoiding large irrelevant language. Design - As filmmakers, they must combine colors, music, transitions, and layout to clearly convey the content.