On Wednesday March 13th my answer would have been that I learned TWO new things but as I reflect back on that day I realize that I learned so much more !  I have been learning (alongside my students, my colleague Sarah and her grade 2 students) about Livescribe pens and incorporating them into my English First Peoples 10 class.

First new learning

• Archie put his earbuds in the end of the Livescribe pen so that he could clearly hear his little buddies’ recording when he was assessing their retelling.

Second new learning

• My students were unable to email  our asseessment rubrics to our Grade 2 buddies because our computer lab does not have Outlook configured for each computer.  We enlisted Mr. Williams’ (my colleague next door)  help and he suggested we save each marked up rubric to the Network in a specific folder. This would allow Mrs. Soltau Heller’s class to access the  rubric documents on our district server.  The assessed rubrics were now in one common place accessible by both classes.

I must say that learning from my students and  colleagues is not entirely new for me but I was extremely excited when I realized that others had the answer to “my little problems.”  Learning from others is easy, sometimes it involves  (1) asking for help and (2) observing others in their process. The most amazing thing was that Archie had gone (quietly) back to his desk with the Livescribe pen & assessment rubric and effortlessly put his earbuds in the end of the pen.  I had never thought to do this, in fact, I had never even noticed the little connector; I realized at that moment that I am very different from my students.  I do not really like Prensky’s (2005/2006) term “digital natives” but I think that Archie is probably more inclined to expect that the Livescribe pen,or any other ICT, would have that  feature.  My students were all cognizant that there was a place to connect your headphones or earbuds into–they thought I was a little bit over the top in celebrating that Archie had “discovered” and taught me something new.

My “AHA!”  moment was their “No, Duh!” moment.