Inquiry Blog Post 3 – Beyond Collaboration

Staff Requests 

This September, we T-L's surveyed staff as to which types of collaboration activities they’d like to do with us. The response was: a lot of people want to do a lot of things! 

This was great to see. Teachers want to work with us. They want to bring kids new experiences. They want to infuse learning with technology. 

The Numbers 

For the purposes of this post, I’ll use the example of coding activities we offered. Here is our question and the responses: 

We have nine 50-minute collaboration blocks per week... And equally enthusiastic response for other collaborations with maker activities, information literacy, and arts.   

With these numbers, we need some creative solutions. This challenge is actually a great opportunity; our solutions can support teachers in growing their own ICT practice. 

Solution One: Towards Free Inquiry 

I’ve found it takes three lesson periods for kids to become confident working with the mBots or Spheros, and complete a little challenge with the robots. (And they can easily spend more!) Where we don’t have the space in our schedule for the T-L to spend three full periods in a classroom, we can aim towards a free inquiry model. This infographic from Trevor Mackenzie is helpful: 

Maybe we spend one lesson with the T-L as the swim instructor in more of a controlled to structured inquiry model. The classroom teacher can take our place as kids (and they!) become more confident and kids take on more agency in the activity. The robots themselves spend a lot of time stored away in the library office when only the T-L leads activities with them; why not sign them out to teachers!  

Solution Two: Partnering Up 

We can also combine two classes for this unit. Now, we have three teachers in the space working together. It’s fun to join up, and we are modelling for students how to work cooperatively. We learn as a community. Here is one way the Library program stands out, the “differentiator” Miller and Bass talk about when they urge us to ask, “What Do I Offer?” (91). Our program is doing something special: “Libraries can offer students different opportunities to experience the content of the classroom” (91).  

If we pair an Intermediate with a Primary class, now we have the bigger kids as experts with pairing the devices etc. The smaller kids get work hands-on with the robots and experience success in cooperation with their older partners. It’s also important to note the excitement that comes with buddying up across the school – especially now, as we missed these experiences so much over the past few years!  

Conclusion 

In reflection with teachers following these units, we can be explicit about the professional learning that took place. Thanks to their flexibility and adventurous spirit for this kind of collaboration, these teachers have greater fluency facilitating ICT in their classrooms.  

Further, these experiences lay the groundwork for future staff Pro-D. Teachers know we are responsive to their needs, and they can see that we’ll do our best with the limited time and resources we have. They can see that, far from running Pro-D our way, we are there to support them as they explore and experiment. 

Finally, more adaptable scheduling and implementation opens up for more extension activities we can do. Hopefully there are some Sphero/mBot dance parties taking place! This video sparks some creative fun:

Works Cited

Mackenzie, Trevor. (2018). "What You'll Discover When You Read Dive into Inquiry."https://www.trevormackenzie.com/posts/2018/1/16/what-youll-discover-when-you-read-dive-into-inquiry.

Miller, S., & Bass, W. (2019). Leading from the Library: Help your School Community Thrive in the Digital Age. International Society for Technology in Education.