I attended my first Treasure Mountain Canada Symposium yesterday, (a Canadian School Libraries project) in collaboration with the Ontario Library Association Superconference and facilitated by Anita Brooks Kirkland and Carol Koechlin. I was invited to submit an academic paper. And while I don’t consider myself an academic necessarily, I did just finish my Masters, and so I was able to take excerpts concerning my findings around amplifying student voice, and submitted it. (Here it is if you are interested).
Virtual Participation
Prior to the conference and even now, I can go to the paper, read and respond, ask questions, and reply to the comments of others. The paper itself is a provocation for thinking about a topic and applying it to your own context. When I submitted a paper, I knew I was going to have the opportunity to delve into the ideas further. It was helpful if I had read the paper in order to choose where I wanted to sit and chat, but it wasn’t necessary. It made me think of a Flipped classroom model whereby some of the reading and thinking happened on my ow
n time so the in-person time could be better spent delving deeper.
Here is a link to all of the papers. Even now, if you are a Teacher-Librarian or leader, you may be interested in checking out some of the papers which interest you.
In person Participation
Everyone who submitted a paper had to create a pitch to entice people to a table talk discussion. We had 20 minutes with one group and 20 minutes with another. When I wasn’t presenting, I had the opportunity to join two different conversations based on my own interests. We had a morning and an afternoon session and we literally moved to a different space in the room in order to facilitate conversations, ask questions, and discuss ideas with peers at the same table. While I was presenting, Jordan Graham walked around to each table capturing snippets which she posted on the blog. It was so great to spend time with my Ontario Teacher-Library and teacher friends and meet new friends from across the country. Check out the hashtag for the day #TMCanada2020 for our real time tweets as we learned.
Here is what she captured from mine and another talk.
In the classroom
I so enjoyed the freedom and flexibility to talk about what was relevant to me and I felt like this participatory experience (not unlike a more structured kind of Edcamp) could easily be replicated in the classroom. How often do we have a large class of 30 students who have to present their ideas to the rest of the class and it takes FOREVER! A demonstration of learning at the end of an inquiry or unit could look like this:
- Students submit their final product to a class blog
- Students have some time to peruse the final products of other students to comment and ask questions (you will need to co-construct what an effective comment looks like)
- Students are divided up into different presentation groups
- Students present a 1 to 2 minute pitch for their final product
- Students facilitate a discussion around their final product and field questions from students
- Students reflect on their table discussions
Have a great week!