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Archived News

Page history last edited by Janet Chow 10 years, 5 months ago

MARCH, 2013

Attention Everyone! Our Consortium group is meeting - mark your calendars for Wednesday March 6, 2013 [3:45-5:30] at Schou Education Centre, (4041 Canada Way, Burnaby). Come prepared to share what you're doing in your district, get ideas from others to add to your toolkit. Please email (janet.chow@sd41.bc.ca) your attendance or contact your district facilitator.

December, 2012

Like many of you, it's been a very busy term with changes happening on all fronts. From all of us to you and your families - best wishes of the season. We plan to meet up in the new year.

October, 2012 - Happy Autumn

We all understand that having current information about a student's learning helps in guiding our practice. When there are so many things that compete for time in our day, sometimes it's difficult to get to those formative assessments. And it's in these times that I find efficiency and speed is my friend. That's where the tools from Intervention Central are great. Consider going toCBM Reading Passages and CBM Maze Passages. These two generators allow you to create your own One-Minute Fluency (running record) or Maze Comprehension measures [with readability levels]. Take your favourite passages and copy/paste into the boxes and a pdf is generated for you to use.

June, 2012

A group of us met at WhiteSpot to catch up on how things were going, to welcome back old friends (Alysha) who took a bit of leave, to consider future plans. A great time was had by all and we left with a renewed energy to move forward and to coordinate more events to share our experiences, our interventions and to generally be a connected supportive group. For now, we'll say... put the headsets away, bring down the posters...

We wish everyone a well deserved holiday, filled with family and friends, much joy and happiness. See you all in the Fall.

May, 2012

It's hard to figure out just where this year went. Like many of you, our district has launched into iPads and a frenzy of questions along with learning this new device have added to the excitement. Some of the questions we're asking are: how does this device support students in developing their literacy skills, what apps are more conducive to what purpose, how do we set up schoolwide accounts, how does a device aimed at personal use be repurposed to be shared...

On a more basic note, I've been hunting for a speech-to-text software that is better suited to younger students (and Dragon just doesn't do it) and I think I've found it.

PaperPort Notes for the iPad is a coordinated effort (Nuance and Noterize) to do almost everything. It has an incredibly powerful speech-to-text synthesizer (simple tap and record), drawing, keyboarding. As if that wasn't enough, it includes the ability to insert images, sticky notes, and web-clippings. Options for saving include Dropbox, Box, GoogleDocs,... Definitely a handy app to have in the toolkit. Only problem-needs access to wireless.

Is your District converting over to the new Platform (MyScilearn) this summer?

We would love to hear your thoughts on how the process is going. Drop us a line - drop a comment in the box here.

Happy New Year!

On Wed. February 1st, 2012 , a wonderful group of energetic people gathered together at Schou Education Centre, Burnaby (3:45-5:30) to learn from each other and share their ideas. Click here for notes on our meeting. If you find more ideas, please email them or add them to the Meetings area. Thanks for all your contributions in the conversation! We hope to have another one some time in the spring.

November, 2011

Some things for you to ponder as we move into December:

Why use "brainstorming" as a strategy to promote deeper original thinking? Click here for Eide Neurolearning Blog.
Seeing is believing.....see a 3-d brain. Click here.
Using Graphic Organizers as Assessment Tasks (Karen Hume). Consider how the visual representations of graphic organizers can help the brain with organization and presentation. Click here for more.

September, 2011 WELCOME BACK

Hope everyone has had a great summer. And now its the excitement of another year of wonder and anticipation of great things. I had the chance to attend the Reform Symposium in July and it was a blast - made new connections and exercised my brain cells. All the videos have been uploaded for anyone to view. Some 'take-aways': learning is passion driven; multiple ways of knowing/doing reaches more and strengthens understandings; teachers need time to explore new tools/platforms...

We hope to have several gatherings of everyone including new people throughout this year (dates and topics to be considered now). If you have ideas of topics or other items, please let us know (either through the COMMENT box OR via email. Have a great year of learning.

SNAPSHOT of our BC GROUP'S WORK with Fast ForWord (April 2011):

Thanks to Dr. Urs Ribary whose forward thinking with John Hopkins' help, we have a bit of snapshot of what's been happening with our groups overall. Click on the image (or here) to download the ppt (version 2007). This really speaks to our teachers and districts hard work in providing opportunities that make a difference in the lives of our students. This is only the beginning.... your ideas and comments are needed to help us all learn and grow. Keep them coming in whatever form you feel comfortable in sharing. (...Janet)

RSC-Scotland has released version 3 of MyStudyBar for those of you who are looking for floating set of apps that support writing/reading/organization needs of students. For more information see my post: http://blogs.sd41.bc.ca/fastforword

February 15, 2011: Just an FYI - Burnaby Fast ForWord website has moved to a new url: http://blogs.sd41.bc.ca/fastforword Come and visit us. If you previously used the RSS feed, I will be adding a new feed to the site.

Jan. 20, 2011:

Sometimes post holiday sidewalk sales aren't just in malls. Some of you have been using Kurzweil 3000 and are finding great benefits in how the students are able to be fully engaged with class materials. For those of you who have been waiting or saving up your pennies, SET BC/PSAP has launched a discount to May 31st. Kurzweil 3000 (ver 12) regularly priced at $300 is now $240!!

And for those looking at Boardmaker Plus. You're not forgotten - you can pick this up for $352. (ends May 31st)

PBS (Frontline - Life on the Virtual Frontier) created Digital Native Map to suggest changes to how our students today react or act or take in information in our digital age. Part 1 called - Inside the Teenage Brain aired earlier. Part 2 - Digital Nation - Feb 2 (9:30pm on PBS) but you can watch it online. Online Roundtable discussion. (2010 02 02)