Karen and Julie at ISTE 2016

Karen Lirenman, an early years educator in Vancouver, Canada, is an award winning primary school teacher who is transforming education by connecting her students with the world using Twitter, blogs, and video conferencing. In 2013 Karen was awarded ISTE’s Kay L Bitter Vision Award for excellence in technology-based PK-2 education. Karen’s mission as a teacher is to change the world one six year old at a time (or through their teachers).

In this case study Karen shares the foundation of her ‘flat’ classroom and how being a global educator means everything to her! It is an inspiration for teachers of younger children across the world.

Connect with Karen
Twitter: @klirenman
Blog: http://www.klirenman.com/

Recently I connected with Karen and she shared these updates to the case study of 2016.

A few things have changed in my world. I still work for Surrey Schools but I now teach at a brand new choice program with in my school district called the Surrey Academy of Innovative Learning.  It’s very new and innovative and my students learning in new and exciting ways. The school website can be found at www.sailacademy.ca but the specific K-7 program (STEAM) can be found here – https://sailacademy.ca/programs/steam-k7/. This September we will be in our third year of the program. We have over double in size after the first year with a wait list with over 100 students on it. This past year I taught a Gr 1-3 combined classroom but more than likely we will have two combined k-3 classes next year and 2 combined 4-7 classes. Do check out the website, and more specifically the video on the K-7 page. The younger students in the video were from my class the first year. Several of the parents that speak in the video are parents of children I taught at the time.

UPDATE! 

“Innovate with iPad: Lessons to Transform Learning”

Karen was also excited to remind me of her new co-authored book “Innovate with iPad: Lessons to Transform Learning” which is available on Amazon or through EdTech Team. 
See the Innovate with iPad website. 

Some thoughts from Karen about the book…..

While we realize there are some great drill and practice type apps, and there is a time and place for those too, we certainly spend far more of our day having our students create their own work, then rely on consumption apps.  What we’ve learned by having our students create content, particularly in an open-ended environment, they know far more than we’ve given them credit for.  Open-ended activities allow our students to really show us what they know or in many cases what they don’t actually know even though they are able to answer questions correctly or quickly. Using iPad in our classrooms has really made a difference with our students thinking and understanding. Their learning has improved.

Read more about this on her blog.