PYP Exhibition – Digi Coach: Embracing Change

Following on from my post Using Tech to Enhance and Engage – The PYP Exhibition, I thought it would be useful to share how we collaborated online throughout the Exhibition process.

At the beginning of the inquiry I built a Google Site with a page for each of the Exhibition student groups: Dance, Painting, Film & Photography, Storytelling & Drama and Music. This site was used as a central hub for students, teachers and mentors to store and access Google Drive resources, to ask questions, share ideas, and reflect.

A key feature of this site was the use of Padlet as an online communication tool. This resource acts like a virtual notice board, where members of the Padlet can post sticky notes and make comments to share ideas. With this engaging and easy to use tool, users can make notes, add pictures, videos and links and comment on each other’s notes (if desired). Within each group’s page on the Google site, I embedded their Padlet for ease of accessibility. Each Padlet was set to private so that only invited users could see the board and student posts were moderated by teachers; ensuring students and teachers had a safe space to collaborate. Below are some screenshots of our Padlets with student and teacher names removed.

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This week our school has just celebrated the learning and achievements of our Year 6 students during their PYP Exhibition. Exploring how people express themselves, the students conducted an in-depth inquiry over six weeks into a Central Idea they helped to create based on their interests and passions.

CENTRAL IDEA

The Arts are a creative language that we use to express ourselves and to inspire others to change the way they think and act.

Facilitated by their teacher and mentor, each student developed their own line of inquiry to investigate. After weeks of asking questions, conducting research, collaborating with peers and exploring different concepts, the students presented their learning to their parents, teachers and other students across the school.

Throughout the Exhibition, students, teachers and mentors used a Google Site (with the added sparkle of Padlet) to communicate and organise resources. See my post Collaborating Online – The PYP Exhibition.

Being able to join Year 6 on their inquiry journey as a Digital Coach was an absolute joy! It was wonderful to see the creative ideas from students and mentors for using technology in their Exhibition. When students wanted ideas for presentation inspiration, we worked together to find ways for technology to engage and captivate their audience. Below are some examples of how we used tech in different ways across the Exhibition groups. Click on the circles to view images and captions.