This very unit led to an hour-long discussion with our school librarian yesterday. Together we developed a Google Sheets document which has the four areas we are supposed to choose from for our reading response this week and then down the side is every grade. We went through each grade and entered in things they are already doing under the header which it met. For example, the grade 4 class uses the Spheros (digital robots) to learn coding. They set up a course in masking tape on the floor and then work together to get their Spheros to navigate through it. The first team through wins. This meets the target of using technology to create hands-on, collaborative learning. We are hoping to go through and ask each teacher what they are using for digital learning and help them analyze it with the questions in the Triple E Framework from our previous article. It's a big undertaking, but we think it will help us to all know what the other is doing and create a better use of technology in our school.

About four years ago, a grade 9 student came to me and asked me if she could create her Iroquois settlement model using Minecraft. My own children were very young and nowhere close to using Minecraft yet. I had heard of it but knew nothing about it. I asked her if I could think about it, and did some research. After learning how interactive the game is and how it allows players to create entire worlds, I decided to let her go for it. Her final project was incredible and went way above and beyond my expectations and my requirements. She was so excited to come in and show it to us-she was able to use a laptop for this-and her presentation was the one the other students were most engaged in, because they all played Minecraft too. I was glad that I had said yes, and I still think on that whenever a student wants to try something new. Think about it, research it, allow it if possible!

This could be a powerful exercise with faculty not just relating to technology, but to all areas where we feel there are inequalities. One issue that often comes up in our small K-12 school is an "us vs. them" attitude between the high school and elementary staff. The elementary staff feels like the high school gets more opportunities, and they may be right. I wonder if doing a CIQ with both sets of staff around the way they view inequality within our school and how it frames their thinking would be eye-opening. We have a healthy staff and good relationships in general, but things do creep up sometimes.

Oh how I have experienced this! I taught at a school located in a very low socio-economic area of Bakersfield, CA for my first teaching position. There were several other high schools in the district and although they should all have had the same opportunities, they definitely did not. My roommate and I were both high school teachers...I was at X School in the rough neighbourhood and she was at Y School in the affluent, mostly white neighbourhood. I had to buy most of my own classroom supplies out of my pocket, she received a classroom stipend. I had to share desks with the teacher in the classroom next to me, she had extra desks that she didn't even need. I coached a sports team and often had to use the school van to drive students to the games and even drive them home afterward, she helped coach cheer and her students received extra lessons outside of school, parents came to all events and the athletic booster club provided them with track suits, new equipment each year, etc. We were both in public schools in the same district, but had VASTLY differing experiences, as did our students.

This caused some great divides among the students and students from our school often made comments about the affluent schools in the district and how the students had it easy, had more breaks than them, received more opportunities, etc. I'm not sure how that divide could have been overcome and I imagine it is still there, with technology now as another issue that divides them and highlights the inequalities.

I think we have to look at why that gap is there. When I taught in an inner-city high school in Bakersfield many of the students came from single-parent families, and even if they didn't they came from low socio-economic backgrounds. They were usually getting themselves to and from school and providing all care for themselves because their parents were often working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. They did all they could just to get food on the table and finding time to help support their kids with school work and mentorship was not something they could afford to do. It wasn't that they didn't want to, they simply couldn't. I think that this shows how important it is to not just provide the access, but to also teach how to use it.

How true this is! Instead of doing book reports last year, in our library time we gave the students an option to do a book trailer. The librarian and I quickly realized we had not given enough scaffolding and direction as the "book trailers" were about one minute of a brief plot synopsis and two minutes of bloopers! Lesson learned by us.

My librarian just introduced me to Flipgrid a few weeks ago and we are utilizing it in a reading project we are having our grade 10s complete. I'm excited to try it. It definitely utilizes technology to help students create videos, but we found that we need to structure it by setting up connecting questions that they respond to in advance which relate to the skills we are targeting. For example, we want the students to discuss a text-to-self connection in which they compare something happening in their novel to something that happened in their own lives. We had to set up a question that got them thinking specifically in that way.

It can be hard to do! Students are VERY quick and crafty at flipping to a different site! Our tech director, however, has the ability to check in on what is on the screen of any students at any time to be able to see what they are looking at without them knowing. He can then hack in and comment and it pops up on their screen. We utilize this. I will send him a private message asking him to do a "check" and he will and then comments. It is effective!

I like this! A simple way to have a checkpoint.

This is an interesting strategy and one I have started to implement with my classes. I show them where we are going for the activity, what the activity calls for, the steps they will have to take, and then I follow up in my check in question for the next class by asking them what they enjoyed about the activity, what they learned, and what they found difficult.

This just gave me an idea! In a k-12 school with buddies we could have our senior students help younger students with editing by using Google Docs. My son is in grade 5 and they use Google Docs for writing book reports. My son always shares them with myself and my husband for editing. Why couldn't he also share them with his big buddy, who is in grade 9?

We are a Google School! All of our high school students know how to use the Google platform and although they still struggle with turning in assignments and remembering to check the Google Classroom, they understand how to comment, how to make suggestions. how to create documents that they can all contribute to for class planning, etc. My students recently created videos for a Work Safe lesson in Career Life Education and they used Google Docs to plan the video frames, write a script, assign roles, and make lists of what they needed. They were then able to submit all of these planning document to me via the Google Classroom. True collaboration.

One thing that I constantly hear is that technology isolates students and makes it difficult for them to understand how to communicate. They say that youth today are disengaged and don't know how to talk to one another. My two sons recently purchased and Xbox with money they had been saving for over a year. My husband and I were hesitant to go down this road, and when they said they wanted to get Xbox LIve so they could "play with their friends" we had a big conversation around rules and how that would play out. Then, they got going in it.

We recently had a series of snow days, and in the afternoons the boys asked if they could go online and play with their friends. They "connected" and were chatting away for over an hour. We have it set so we can hear everything that was being said, and as they built a world in Minecraft they discussed school projects, classmates they were struggling with, talked about strategies for creating buildings, and just talked away for the entire time. They were in no way isolated or not communicating. They were, in fact, using critical thinking and communication skills to build their world, among other skills.

I think this same situation can translate into the use of technology in our classrooms, we just need to find the right tools.

Last year my class and I created an Escape Room in our drama portable. We used a lot of different technologies for this. They used the Sketch Up program to design the room layout and what props we needed. They used Google docs and spreadsheets as planning documents, with each group putting tasks and items needed into it. They used a digital music editing software program to create a soundtrack for the room that perfectly matched the time they had and the ambiance we were trying to create. This is just a starting point. The students were interviewed afterward for a video the school wanted to create on the project and they all could name at least one "real-life" skill they had developed through the project and the use of these various technological methods. It was also the most engaged I had ever seen them in my two years of teaching them!

This is such an interesting tool that I think teachers could use themselves to assess their own implementation of technology in their lessons.

I just had a lengthy discussion on this today with our school librarian. She is the one person in our school who really sees most of the different technologies that are being used, because a lot of it happens in the library, especially anything to do with our MakerSpace. She mentioned that the biggest challenge is teacher buy in. She felt that this was mostly due to not knowing how to employ the tools. To get students on board, teachers need to be on board, otherwise most students just see things like iPads as a toy. I like that many administrators seem to be seeing the need to provide this coaching. As a small, private school I always wonder, however, where does the funding and time come from?

I really appreciate that they are implementing just one thing, and then actually following up on it and sharing. That makes it seem easier to implement.

I wish I could see what this looked like in action. How did they provide time for training? Where did the funding come from? How did they get teacher buy-in?

Our school is a tech-advanced school. We have two iPad carts teachers can book for use, a computer lab with a class set of laptops that can be booked as well as a set of desktops, a library with a class set of laptops and a class set of iPads available for booking, AppleTV hookups in every room, a 3D printer, and-most recently-a laser engraver. This is all technology that is available to both students and teachers to utilize. I feel like the technology director and admin usually know the vision for these devices, but it is not always translated well to the staff. I am wondering if this will be a part of my proposal. As I talk about this topic with teachers in my school it seems that we would all appreciate a sort of "vision" and "scope and sequence" for the use of technology in our school. That being said, I'm not complaining! I am thankful that my children go to this school where they have opportunities to utilize cutting edge technology. My own son has used our Sphero cart and iPads to learn coding, designed and created a puzzle using the laser engraver, and learned French through the use of a language program on the computers. There are definitely advantages, I just wonder if we all know what the other is doing.

I think that this is an important step to consider. If a student has outpatient care, it is so important for the strategies and procedures to be communicated to the school so that they can work together as a team rather than doing something that may obstruct student success and development in this.

Is this due to the assessments that are already happening for these students in other areas? How can we begin to assess the needs of our students struggling with anxiety? I'm not sure what the process is for this. Would it be overboard to create IEPs for students who only suffer from anxiety? Is there a stand alone IEP purely for anxiety-related issues...excuse my lack of knowledge. I just had a big conversation with my husband-who is also a teacher-about this! If a student has a plan in place just for this, would it raise our awareness of the adaptations that need to be put in place for these students?

This makes me wonder what our parents believe we have in place as support for students who struggle with anxiety? I would like to talk about it more with my admin team.

This also doesn't even consider the "hidden students" who may not have an IEP for other reasons. How can we find and support them as well as those that are already on IEPs?

Is reading aloud something that is still forced upon students? I shudder at the thought of this! Such a simple thing can create so much damage in a student who feels anxiety over this. On the flip side, I love giving students the choice to read out loud if they wish. I have had students who were not great readers that wanted to read out loud and I was so grateful at the patience and encouragement given by their classmates. As I have watched the videos on inclusivity this week and I think about the statement one person made (I apologize for not remembering who it was, but it was in the Inclusive Education video) that "Inclusive education is about opportunity" (Inclusive Education: From Political Correctness Towards Social Justice, 2017). Allowing students to read out loud gives opportunity. Opportunity for them to grow and develop and for other students to show that they appreciate and value that student, regardless of his or her ability. I have been so encouraged by the community of my students and their appreciation and acceptance of one another.

How often do we actually know that students are seeking outpatient treatment? I can think of one student that I know in my current classes whose mom felt that it was really important for us to be a team and she let us know every time that her daughter had gone to Children's Hospital, how the treatment was going, and if there was advice for us a her teachers. I appreciated this SO much as it helped me to know how to relate to and connect with this student. We were able to create a firm foundation when she was going through the worst of it in grade 8 and now that she is in grade 11 we still have a wonderful connection and she knows that she can trust me and I also know her symptoms and triggers. It has been wonderful to go on that journey with her. She is not a student with any other diagnosed disabilities and has no IEP or learning plan put in place. Without her mom letting us know about this treatment, we never would have known it was happening because she hid it quite well. I wonder what we can do as schools to let parents know that this is not a shameful thing or something that they are on their own with and that we want to be a team with them?

As a teacher in a small independent school, we do not have what I consider to be a school-based mental health provider that I know of...something I am beginning to feel pretty strongly needs to change. What kind of school-based mental health do you have? Do you have school counsellors that are trained in mental health care and strategies?

I just emailed this information to our elementary vice principal and lead principal. I am hoping we can get a workshop in our school or attend one in another district. I wish they had one for high school! I bet I could learn things at this one though. Will anyone attend one of these?

I appreciated reading this article, as it took me back to my high school experience. Of course in 1996, this was not something that was really discussed, nor were there any supports in place, but I do believe I had GAD from a very young age. I remember my parents going out on dates and me laying in bed unable to sleep, believing that they had been in a car crash and I wouldn't see them again. I recall crying with relief when they would arrive home. I worried so much that my dad picked a special Bible verse for me that we would recite together before they left to go anywhere.

In grade 11 my worry became so all consuming that although I was that so-called dream student, it all came crashing down. I was on the volleyball team, in the drama production, on student council, trying to achieve a perfect 4.0, trying to be a model student, trying to have a relationship with God, trying to do it all. All day long I would worry about how the next moment was going to go, if I was doing things right, if I was letting everyone else down...but on the outside I seemed perfect.

One day I came home, started crying and could not stop. I am so grateful for my parents. There was no cognitive behaviour therapy in place as this article discusses and we didn't have anything close to a psychologist in our tiny South Dakota town of 500, but my parents did what they could. They put into place our own CBD. Every night before bed my parents had me write out a list of my worries and addressed each one with practical steps and prayer together. They would help me create a plan for the next day. They helped me think about all I was doing and see if I could step down from something. They helped me identify my trigger moments and gave me scripture to recite when those worries came up. My dad wrote me a sticky note that he stuck to my door EVERY SINGLE MORNING before he left for work with an encouraging note for the day and a prayer. He did this every single day until I graduated and left home for college. I still have every single one of those notes.

I think that realizing that a website like this with these strategies and protocols would have been amazing for my parents in that time, and for parents now. As a mom of a child who I already see is much like myself, I know that I will be coming back here to find help!

This app looks really amazing! I think I will install it and see how it works and if it is easy to use. As a teacher of high school students who are glued to their phones, I like the idea of utilizing their phones as an opportunity to help them.

Does anyone have any kind of anxiety training that is offered in their school settings? I wonder if that would be possible in my school. I'm thinking about how we could use a staff professional development day to do some general education in what it even looks like for our students. Lana, do you think this would actually be possible in our school?

Does anyone else in our group teach the new Career Life Curriculum in the province of BC? I feel like these videos could be quite useful for my students in my CLE 10 and 11 classes. I'm looking forward to previewing them, sharing some of them with my students and taking them through some of these resources.

Hi all! Just checking in here. I will add some annotations in some other areas. I'm excited to check out this site!