How do you make thinking visible, and avoid being an intellectual black hole?

Making Thinking Visible

I have been seeing a lot about "making thinking visible," and I am trying to do that with my own thinking. In Art Education, the instructor is emphasizing that showing process is both important and beautiful. In Education Technology, the term "selfie your learning" is being used to get at the same thing. Science Education is about the scientific process, particularly through inquiry. In Math Education, reasoning and showing your thinking are being emphasized. This is the growth mindset in action. How do you make thinking visible, and avoid being an intellectual black hole?

 

How do black holes work?

In the name of making thinking visible, I decided to use Storify to document my journey through my Science Education inquiry project: How do black holes work? It seems particularly fitting, since this video poses the question "How do you study something that by nature evades detection?" This Storify will be a work in progress for the next week, so I invite you to follow along, and if you have any resources, please let me know!

P.S. I love how Storify lets me curate across platforms!

Tech-ing In

PDPPPosseRC

Today I published these posts on the PDPPPosseRC blog:

• Mmm, Cookies! by Robert Munsch,
• Science Verse by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith, and
• Books by Mo Willems.

 

STEM Puns

Visual Journal comparing my STEM Puns cartoons to mentor artist Natalie Dee

I have been having fun with my STEM Puns passion project. I created a visual journal entry comparing my cartoons to online cartoonist Natalie Dee. Through that process, I realized that I would like to try adding texture to my work. 

Twitter Chats 

On February 10th I took part in a #TwitterChatMarathon. I took part in an #EdChat about eliminating "us vs. them" dynamics in education, a #BCStuTeach chat about brain breaks, and a #TeacherFriends chat about diversity. As an added bonus, I won a resource prize from one of the #TeacherFriends moderators, @fuzzlady77.

Last night I participated in a #BCEdChat about social media in schools.

By participating in Twitter chats, I have grown my PLN significantly. I am now connected with experienced and pre-service teachers from a number of countries, including the United States and France.   

Today I found out about Nurph, a Twitter chat platform, which might make this process easier. Currently I used Hootsuite.

Get Connected

Video Conference Tutorials
I am putting together a couple of video conference tutorials about Blogger and Twitter for my colleagues in #edci336. If you are interested in attending one (or both) of these sessions, what sort of topics/questions would you like to see covered?

I will be using BlueJeans for these video conferences. Tomorrow afternooon I will start learning how to host a session using BlueJeans. On Thursday morning I will be using it to host a meeting between the PDPPPosseRC and a local teacher. Hopefully by the time I host the aforementioned tutorials, I will be able to use BlueJeans without getting David Bowie's song "Blue Jean" stuck in my head!

Twitter
By all accounts - and certainly by my Twitter account - I have been tweeting up a storm lately. I have expanded my PLN, increased my engagement in some great communities, found some terrific resources, and just generally been quite inspired by what I have found.

Today I started using Hootsuite, and I think that I am starting to get the hang of it. It certainly didn't take long for me to tweet a pun about it.

One particularly fruitful connection was with the Royal BC Museum. Because of this connection, I have been given the opportunity to be part of a creative team for an outreach project that combines science and comics. What an incredible combination of Science Education and Art Education! 

Face-to-Face Learning
I am so excited to be taking part in these fabulous opportunities for networking and professional development in the near future:

• #yyjignite on Wednesday,
• A national science outreach conference in Ottawa in 1.5 weeks, where I will be sharing what I have learned both while working as a STEM outreach instructor/coordinator, and while taking last term's courses in Indigenous Education and Education Psychology,
• A public information session at Pacific Institute of Inquiry and Innovation (PSII) on February 7th, and
• #edcampvic on February 28th.

Will I be seeing you at any of these events? Are there any other great events coming up? Let's get connected!

-Britney (@MlleBallen)