#CBE182 Day 177: Krista Jensen, Learning Leader, Battalion Park School

Sometimes it takes me a while to get to things; like writing this blog post. A blog post about how long it has taken me to get around to learning how to use the Green Screen.  The Green Screen I tried to avoid noticing, as it hung in the staff room, all big and…well – green.  But there is a story here, so sharing it is worthwhile. It is about asking for help and the support and inspiration of others. And those stories are always worth telling.

So yes, the Green Screen – with its high-tech gadgetry, had been in our staff room for more than a year – taunting me, reminding me of things not done, things unknown; lack – of time, of  knowledge, of learning opportunities. Ugh.

For this story to happen, I had to admit to my teaching team of Cathy Patrick, Helen Kounougeris, Dorothy Mah and Saralyn Winston that, while interested and curious, I did not know how to do anything with the Green Screen. They created a safe space for me to do this in their willingness to join me in not knowing, and in a keenness to try. Which brought us to the crux of this story – how would we learn without help - without knowing where to start? It looked easy on YouTube, but I am a “Pinterest Fail” expert, so what now? Perhaps we could do it next year – like I said last year.  Except…was he serious?

I need to back the story up. The whole Green Screen wonderment was started by Steve Clark (@stevewclark), one of our CBE Curriculum and Pathways specialists, tweeting out an app recommendation. When I retweeted it to my teaching team, he replied with “Let me know if I can help.” Yes. Yes please! And he did. Steve made time in his schedule to come and build the confidence in our grade team that we could do this - this piece of technology WAS as easy as it looked. A few weeks later he came back to our school a few more times  and worked with us through the major glitch of iPad care and organization. (“Where’s the camera icon?” “I don’t know how to connect to the internet.” “Mine won’t turn on.” “I can’t find my photo. I saved my photo. Where’s my photo?” Quotes overheard by Steve Clark while trying to help our teaching team).

It was not without troubles and frustrations. The project of bringing Inuit artifacts to life through curiosity, research and imagination was almost kyboshed more than once when the tsunami of the everyday busyness washed over us again and again. But we were in this together. And it did keep getting better. Success created motivation, and we were having successes too! Many of the students had enough experience with Green Screen work that they were excited and engaged. We were learning from trial, error and each other. I was never able to take on the role of expert in this learning experience – I needed help figuring out how to download the app. But others did lead – help was everywhere. Our entire grade two team – students and teachers alike - took this experience over, becoming risk takers and mistake makers who all, in the end, created end products (photos and one brave class even dove right in and did videos!) that showed deeper understanding and motivated student-led learning in the ways we had hoped for at the very beginning of “Hey – I saw this thing on Twitter.”

“In the end it was the walking that made all the difference. It took arriving, always arriving, to finally understand that is was never about where I ended up, but only how I got there. I hope I never get to where I am going.”
~ Tyler Knot Gregson

Thank-you to my awesome grade 2 teaching team for your sense of constant adventure. Thank-you to Steve Clark for your help, humour and patience. And Thank-You to Ronna Mosher for allowing our students permission to access your personal photos of Rankin Inlet; which provided an authentic and important conversation around digital citizenship and respecting artistic property.


Krista (@MsKikiJ11), Cathy, Dorothy, Saralyn and Helen teach grade 2 at Battalion Park School. (@BattalionParkSc).