In this episode of the XL Podcast, I speak to Marc Dubeau from Osgoode Township High School about where the world of computer generated animation is heading and how, despite the constraints, he and his students have managed to keep up and, in some cases, leap beyond in pursuit of creative, sophisticated virtual reality, augmented reality, and full performance motion capture animation.

When Marc first suggested that students, with the right tools, could create in augmented and virtual reality I was skeptical.

All along Marc and his students have not only seen the possibilities, but connected with industry and learning partners discovering that with imagination and ingenuity high school students can walk in lockstep with technological innovation that makes for dynamic beyond-your-imagination learning.

YouTube 

Twitter: @marcdubeau

Further Reading: 

Aliens and Pikachus: real-time tech goes to high school (Osgoode Township High School)

Watch: Emma Smith's award winning Climate Change Inequalities (video) 

In this episode of the XL Podcast, part three in our series of conversations with Carolyn Johnston about “learning adventures”, Space and The Science of Flight, we turn the mics over to some of Carolyn’s grade 6 learners to hear more about the learning experience, how it contributed to their sense of purpose, meaning, contribution, and belonging, and all while learning virtually during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

What if the test of our belief in the capacity of our students involved a true leap of faith?

What if our belief involved challenging our assumptions about baselines; challenged our thinking about "learning loss" by taking one giant leap, I mean a giant leap: like in the footsteps of a space program…?

What if we began in space and worked our way down from there?

In this episode of the XL Podcast, part two in our series of conversations with Carolyn Johnston, we pick up, maybe lift off, from where we concluded in episode 10: Carolyn and her class are “pivoting the learning journey” in mid-flight - the learning is “fresh and students are ready for it” and so Carolyn decides in the middle of a connection with the aerospace industry about space that a seamless transition to The Science of Flight should follow.

Adventures are a funny thing: they are dynamic, they are messy, there is planning, but it is a planning centred in possibility rather than predetermining each step of the adventure.  In short, adventures are a longer path to a far more profound depth of learning, because destinations are less the concern than the stops along the way: even when the destination is space itself. 

Stager, Gary (2008): Learning Adventures: A new approach for transforming real and virtual classroom environments

Stager, Gary (2020): Revisiting Learning Adventures in the Time of COVID-19

Gary Stager - Twitter

What if our belief in the capacity of students involved challenging our assumptions about baselines; challenged our thinking about "learning loss" by taking one giant leap, I mean a giant leap like in the footsteps of a space program…?

What if we began in space and worked our way down from there?

In this episode of the XL Podcast, part one of a two-part series with Carolyn Johnston, we talk about learning adventures; as you’ll hear, this particular adventure begins in space, and bridges, later, to flight.

Stager, Gary (2008): Learning Adventures: A new approach for transforming real and virtual classroom environments

Stager, Gary (2020): Revisiting Learning Adventures in the Time of COVID-19

Gary Stager - Twitter

In part 2 of our series looking at Hillcrest High School’s CNX program I talk with Marilyn McMillan, the educator who transformed ideas and theory into a learning experience like no other; a community which revolves and evolves in space: for learners to see themselves, be themselves, and to begin from anywhere.

Marilyn and I are joined by Principal Geordie Walker. 

Together, our conversation spins a narrative from theory to action in an effort that has resulted in students seeing themselves as learners, and learning to advocate for their genius as a means to navigating school. 

Marilyn McMillan - Twitter

CNX - Instagram

Geordie Walker - Twitter

Hillcrest High School - Twitter

Geordie Walker is the self-described “proud Principal of Hillcrest High School.” Moreover, he is a model for educational leadership: the kind of professional educator we ought to aspire to. 

In our conversation, Part 1 of a series looking at Hillcrest High School’s CNX (pronounced "Connects") - an initiative that seeks to serve the most underserved students by starting with relationship and an acknowledgement of genius - Geordie and I discuss “ghosts” - visibly disengaged students who we often fail to see, and the problem of schools in the problem solving frame of Apollo 13 - “somebody believed.”

Geordie Walker - Twitter

Hillcrest High School - Twitter

CNX - Instagram 

Richard is the polymath engineer-cum-educator behind the most innovative robotics program that I have encountered in the OCDSB.

In my conversation with Richard, we talk about wondering “what’s under the hood” as the first step to imagining something that doesn’t exist. The next step? According to Richard, it is creating that something in, making that something in, our own image.

Further Reading:

TEJ3M Robotics – Mars Rover Project: LIVE in Mr. Young’s Living Room

In the midst of the most disruptive period in public education in recent memory, Jason Whiting chose two paths that stand out as exceptional: first, reflecting upon his practice he saw the urgency for more student agency; second, with a little support and a little inspiration, he was willing to try something entirely new: what if while learning grade 4 Math and Language his students could help even just one person?

It was a provocation both his students and he were willing to commit to. The result is Made2HelpOttawa - a social enterprise built and designed by 9-year-olds as the method and expression of learning; a business that focuses the learning on an audacious goal: helping others.

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In this episode of the XL Podcast,  part two of my conversation with Jason, we get a behind-the-scenes look at an all encompassing learning experience with a single goal: to help “just one person”. Along the way, Jason and his students discover that the idea of “investing” - in ourselves, in our peers, in others - is a phenomenal context for learning just about anything.

The thing is, when just about anything is the framework for learning, there is an abundance of learning at your fingertips. In the case of Made2HelpOttawa, these grade 4 students extend their reach well-beyond the walls of school, into the community and beyond, in an endeavour that travels lite, and ricochets like an echo so far beyond any curriculum expectations.

Made2help Podcast

Made2HelpOttawa (Twitter) 

Jason Whiting (Twitter)

In the midst of the most disruptive period in public education in recent memory, Jason Whiting chose two paths that stand out as exceptional: first, reflecting upon his practice he saw the urgency for more student agency; second, with a little support and a little inspiration, he was willing to try something entirely new: what if while learning grade 4 Math and Language his students could help even just one person?

Made2HelpOttawa (Website) 

Made2help Podcast

Made2HelpOttawa (Twitter) 

Jason Whiting (Twitter)

In our third episode in a 3-part series exploring the OCDSB's Project 'True' North, I talk to Jessica McIntyre.  Jessica joined 15 educators in the OCDSB in the initial launch of Project ‘True’ North, an initiative that seeks to disrupt the approach to learning history as a means to developing an ignored narrative from Canadian History, written by learners. Jessica’s approach to learning is as perfect an example of any I’ve encountered in the raw emotion you can feel in her description of uncovering a life, and in the process of seeing her students, maybe in a light not witnessed before.