Documenting Learning: And so the Journey Begins

Dear Silvia,

Thank you for always sharing your passion with those around you and in particular with me over the few years that I have known you. The fact that I am starting a blog today is a tangible outcome of all your hard work in this area.  So what better way to pay tribute than for my first ever post to be about documenting learning, and you!

This month marks the release of your new book but I was lucky enough to start consuming that book three years back when we first met in Atlanta on a bus to the Ron Clark Academy. We were both in Atlanta for AAIE’s Annual Leadership conference and we connected through our mutual friend Paul Sicard. We ended up sitting beside each other on the bus and on this short ride your ideas about documenting of/as/for learning had a big impact on me.  

Meeting you and being exposed to these ideas was very timely as I had just introduced a brand new technology for parent communication to my staff back in Bangalore, a mobile App called Bloomz. 

We were in an trial period for teachers and seeing how it could be used by early adopters. During this first stage of implementation of Bloomz (Facebook-like App) was that teachers initially felt most comfortable using it as a replacement for email and would include photos in their post, mainly newsletter type messages. My conversation with you Silvia showed me that there was so much more untapped potential there. 

Your theories made sense to me and like many great discoveries in our lives this exposure and growing awareness was timely as it was just before our professional development share day back at school in Bangalore.

The brainwave that had come to me from our conversations was, what if we applied the same strategies of documenting learning to our Bloomz posts? During the rest of the conference and my long flight back Bangalore I prepared a presentation which I would later share with our staff. 

I started to see Bloomz as an opportunity for our teachers to amplify learning in the exact same way as Twitter, but not to the world, directly to our parents.  I could foresee these curriculum driven messages as having a positive impact on parent efficacy and encourage stronger parent-teacher partnerships.

Bloomz is a secure closed mobile platform that provides direct and immediate access to all of the parents in a teacher's class. Multiple classes can be built into a school umbrella page.  

So, Silvia, my first deep dive into your unpublished theories was documenting "for" learning using Bloomz, an idea I shared with our staff using this Google Slideshow. 

Fast forward to the TAISI conference here in India, September 2017.  Only about a year and a half into our school’s journey with Bloomz documenting and sharing learning, within our community, has been a tremendous success. 

Parents are in love with Bloomz as it is their window into the classroom.  Teachers provide them with curated narration based on educationally centred insight, developing a deeper awareness into what is happening at school. Parent efficacy is at an all time high.

As a result of our sharing I feel our parents trust our teachers more than before, which in turn contributes significantly to a positive and supportive school culture. In fact, since I am a part of each classroom's Bloomz forum, I feel that I am even more in touch with what is happening around the school.

Overall, Bloomz has been a tremendous benefit and telling our story around the learning taking place in the classrooms has been the key to our success.  Photos are not simply accompanied by the comment "having fun in math" but rather the message seeks to share the learning objective promoting parent advocacy and involvement in their child's development and engagement with the teacher. 

So back to the TAISI.  When I found out that you were coming to India and presenting at the TAISI Leadership Conference I asked if you needed any support with your presentation and if I could share a part of our journey with your audience during that presentation. I was excited when you accepted my offer and I curated a few samples from Bloomz to share at your workshop. 

Of course, us meeting up would be nothing without you giving me another impromptu private lesson on documenting learning!

And like our meetings in the past, this meeting would not disappoint. Just one of the many stories you shared with me was about Sean Walmsley and his tremendous use of video to amplify teaching and learning at his school.

I particularly loved the slide that you shared with me with great ideas for content (below).  I promise that as I move forward in my own journey sharing and amplifying learning, I will try them out. 

During our impromptu professional share session there was one thing you made clear for me, and that was that to really amplify my learning or our school's learning we have to push our message out to the world, beyond Bloomz.

Both myself and our marketing department do curate our school's Bloomz content and share it on Twitter. I also do a lot of fun stuff with video at our school and put it on YouTube. But you continue encourage us to do more.

When it comes to blogging, I have quite frankly felt over the years that I don't have enough good advice to give to sustain my own blog.  Each time I meet with you, you make me feel bad for not having started yet! 

Well thanks to you, today is that day! 

There is still however one last Silvia story responsible for making this Blog a reality.

Our most recent interaction was actually this year, here in Bangalore this past week. After AAIE in New York a little over a week ago, we headed straight to the airport and boarded our planes to Bangalore!  Our school had signed you up to come to Bangalore and present at TechConX our annual educators conference, and then to spend the rest of the week with small groups of teachers in hopes we can take documenting learning to the next level.

Following your advice and constant encouragement I made a bigger commitment to share and signed up to present at TechConX too this year.

I presented a workshop on using iMovie to document learning, a hands-on experience that allowed participants to create their own artefacts. The truly special part of this workshop was that my sons got involved and helped out. 

When Nacho and Carlos heard that I was doing a presentation on iMovie their ears popped up, "Can we help Dad? We know how to use iMovie we use it all the time for our YouTube videos." 

Since the conference was at our school I jumped at the chance to include them, and of course the educator in me was excited to give a 9 and 11 year old their first teaching experience. Actually, their participation really drove home a good message that teachers don't have to be, and shouldn't be, the only ones documenting learning in the classroom. Students of all ages these days are capable of using digital media for themselves. Here is a copy of our presentation.

What was really amazing was that Silvia, you attended my presentation.  Not only did you attend my presentation, you documented it for me using video and images on Twitter.  Below are the video and images that you shared during the conference. Thank you for that!

So, this leaves us at the final leg of today's story.  The reason for this post, my first ever blog post, and hopefully not my last.

Silvia, your visit this past week coincided within days of your book release so you thankfully managed to bring a few copies of your book A Guide to Documenting Learning with you. 

I was excited to get a copy for myself.  You left my copy on my desk before leaving for the airport. When I finally had the chance to open it up and start reading it this weekend, I saw your personalised report card comments in the front cover once again supporting my growth but encouraging me to put my beliefs into action, amplify and share beyond our classroom walls (or in this case beyond Bloomz).

So, I did it, this post is for you! 

Documenting learning is a truly innovative and important part of education in the XXI Century.  It helps grow both student and parent efficacy which according to most research is at the heart of genuine and significant student success. Thank you so much for your mentorship in this area over the years, and friendship.

#documentinglearning #silviatolisano