Learning from my first Ignite Experience

As I type away, I wonder if I shouldn't have titled this post: "My first Ignite Experience and How I blew it."  But more about that later.

A month or so ago, I got a message from David Carruthers asking me to do an Ignite Talk for #EdCampLdn on April 27, 2019.  That message opened up a can of fear that jumped around in my brain like a mass of angry snakes.  That terror told me one thing.  I needed to do it.  We aren't growing if we aren't stretching ourselves and taking a risk.  I thought to myself: Don't over-think this. Answer before you talk yourself out of it.  So I said I would do it.

My next step was to research Ignite talks: how to write them, how to do them and how to make them meaningful.  A blog post from Scott Berkun was really helpful, as was watching some great Ignite talks on YouTube (there are lots out there).  I also contacted a member of my PLN Noa Daniel, who had just given an Ignite talk of her own for YRDSB's #EdTechCampOnAir.  She suggested I just sit down and write it all out in a stream of consciousness mode and go from there.  She also volunteered to help me develop it by reading my drafts and watching a practise or two via Google Hangout.  (Gotta love your PLN - they are always there for you and willing to help!).

I had a topic in mind.  It was an idea for a blog post that had been floating around in my head, but hadn't quite gotten to the written stage yet.  So, I sat down and wrote it all out.  I wanted to talk about how Special Education isn't just for kids with high needs, it's for all of our students.  How every student has needs we need to reach and how every teacher can help them.  I sat down and let it all just pour out of me.  The result: 15-20 minutes of unorganised zeal about the topic.  Much too long for the 5 minute Ignite parameters.  Over the next two weeks, I edited, revamped and tightened it up. Then I shared the draft with my friend and coach, Noa.  She gave me some really helpful comments and constructive criticism which I used to make my message clearer and more concise.

Then the slides.  In an Ignite you have 5 minutes and 20 slides that auto advance every 15 seconds.  Timing is very important.   So I blocked out the written document and practised speaking it, looking at what I needed on each slide to reinforce that 15 second segment.  I shared the slides with Noa, and with her help, refined those as well.

Then it was time to practise, practise, practise.  I went over it again and again and again.  Every time a little different, every time a little better.  I was practising in my car, in my house, making my husband and my sister listen, and as the date approached, performing it in a Google Hangout with Noa.  I wanted it to be perfect.



Throughout this time period, the other 5 Ignite speakers scheduled that day, kept up a Twitter DM stream encouraging each other.  There were a lot of silly gifs, some advice, but mostly just supporting each other.  Bless these fine ladies.  We were all in the same boat and all a little scared. So a shout out to them for helping me!  Heidi Solway, Dawn Telfer, Kiersten Wrona, Lesley Robertson, and Dr. ParshatiPatel you are the Spice Girls of the Ignite Experience!  It was also liberating to learn that the Astrophysicist among us, was just as nervous about giving her ignite as we were!

Dr. Patel, myself, Lesleym Kiersten, Heidi and Dawn - Ignite Speakers 2019

So the big day arrives.  The big moment arrives.  I'm up first.  I'm glad, because I really didn't want to have to follow the Astrophysicist, even if she was just as nervous as I was.  To add to our load, we were being live streamed through the Sir Arthur Currie PS Twitter feed, and being broadcasted live on www.voiced.ca by Stephen Hurley.  No pressure.

I decide to leave my phone (with my speech content prompts) on the podium, step away from the podium and just go with it.  Besides, there was a hand held mic.  I couldn't hold the mic, talk with my hands and hold my phone.  In hindsight, perhaps, I should have held on the the phone and not talked with my hands.  But hindsight is 20/20.

I begin.  And I'm off and everything is going great.  But then, and I honestly cannot tell you what went wrong or got me to lose my focus, but about halfway in, I lost my train of thought.

What I should have done is taken a breath, looked back at my slide and just carried on.

Instead.  Sheer panic.

Walked back to the podium to grab my Phone.  As I got there, I glanced up at my slides.

Then it came back to me.  I turned around, got right back into it and carried on to the end.

It was only about 5-10 seconds in real time, but it felt like 30 minutes to me.  If only I could have those 5-10 seconds back.  If only, if only....

I sat down.  My fellow igniters gave me some brief encouragement, and then they were up to share their passions.  I listened and watched in awe at their brilliance.  Which was difficult, because I felt like a complete and utter failure.

Coach Noa also sent me a text of support.  In low times, what would we do without our friends?

I gave myself a quick pep talk.  "It's not the end of the world.  You will learn from this.  Pull yourself together because this is just the start of the day and you are one of the organisers of this event.  There is work to be done and much to be shared. "  And I did.

The day went on and it was awesome.  Our numbers were up from last year and the sessions, from what I experienced myself, and from the Twitter stream, were great.  Over lunch (and through the Twitter stream), I got some favourable feedback about my message. When I voiced my distress over messing up, I was reminded that I'm the only one who will remember that and that I should focus on the power of the message, and not my little bobble.  Good advice.  At the end of the day, I was  feeling the adrenaline high of a great day. #EdCampLdn was a success and in our debrief session, my fellow organisers and I were already talking about next year.

But I still have a little sadness in me about what I wanted that Ignite to be.  So, I'm blogging about it, so I can reflect on and to learn from it, and maybe exorcise that little demon voice in my head.  I'm thinking about what my students feel when they take a risk and it doesn't go exactly as planned.  Thanks to this experience, maybe I can help them see that even if the leap they made doesn't land smoothly, they still made the leap.   Success isn't always going to be a perfect 10.0 landing.  Sometimes success is just making the leap.

As always, I welcome your comments below.  Have you done an Ignite?  How did it go?  What is the definition of success? Is it different in every situation?

If you want to see the mess I made of my Ignite here is the link to the Twitter live stream.
And I screen-casted one of my final run-through sessions.  So if you want to see how I hoped it would go, I've embedded it here:

Canada Beats: Learning about Canada through music

For the last little while, my class has been learning about Canada, but we haven't been doing all of our learning about our Country in traditional ways.  I wanted my Students to be thinking beyond those facts that they can Google about Capital Cities, population and geographic landmarks.  And I wanted them to look a bit at history, but not by using a textbook or a timeline. They are also music lovers and will ask to turn the radio on, or be allowed to use their headsets to listen to music on their iPads every day.  I wanted to leverage some of that interest.  So, we've been using Canadian song writers and performers to look at our Country.

I had been talking to Noa Daniel about her BOB (Building Outside the Blocks) activity called Harmony Through History Beats, where she has students taking a song and deconstructing it to find the history within it.  I wondered if it was something I could use as part of our unit on Canada and give it a Canadian theme.  Noa was very supportive of my amending her idea, and even helped me find some songs and songwriters to add to a shared Google Doc to give my students a place to start.  And so, Canada Beats was born.

I work with students with some fairly high needs, so I knew I would need to help scaffold this project for them.  The shared Google Doc was a place they could find a list of songs that had a Canadian theme or historical background.  They didn't have to pick one of these songs - I was very open to a song or performer they might choose, as long as it had some ties to Canadian history, identity or geography.

Next we decided as a class what our Google Slide Shows needed to have in them and created a template to help everyone understand what information we would need to research.  They were welcome to include more than this, but these were sort of the starting points.  I told them I would create one as well and share it with them and be our first presenter.  Mine was a Stompin' Tom classic.  I gave them some class time to work on it, but many of them used time at home to work on it as well.  One of my students liked the activity so much, she finished hers in record time and decided to do a second one as well.

The hardest part for them was deciding on a song.  Many of the songs they had never heard before because they were released before they were born (some of them even before I was born).  Some of them wanted a more modern song, and spent a good deal of time looking for one.  YouTube got a bit of a workout those first few days.  Some had to do additional research to find out more about a specific historical event, or places mentioned in a song.  With a bit of help from each other, the E.A.s and myself, this was accomplished.

While apps like Vokki and Tellagami, or iMovie were options for presenting, they all decided they wanted to present in a more traditional fashion - just them and their slide show.  All good.  With just one presentation left this week, I have to say, it was a successful activity for them.  The slide shows were good (link to them here), but their presentations really blew me away.  Normally very shy, they really came out of their shells and shared why they picked a song, what they learned from it and even gave additional details about the historical event, place or the band that they learned as part of the research process.

Can they instantly tell me what the capital of New Brunswick is?  Probably not.  Luckily, we have Google for that. (By the way, it's Fredericton - a gorgeous city on the St. John river.)



As always, I welcome your questions or comments below.  Do you think I should be drilling and grilling the provincial capitals?  Is a deeper understanding of some historical events better than a general understanding of a longer historical timeline? Is using music this way problematic?