Thursday 22 December 2016

Chapter Chat: a reading adventure

Chapter Chat is a group of primary school classrooms who read the same chapters of an assigned book each week. The students get a list of questions to answer that are the main source of conversation in the Twitter group (this discussion format with prearranged questions is the same used with teacher twitter discussion groups). The students also get a range of tasks to choose from to show their comprehension in a creative way. I provided my students with a weekly template of the tasks and questions (you can see last years one here), this was a collaborative document and groups duplicated the question page and made it their own.


Organiser (Stephen Baker) started Chapter Chat to foster a love of books, and as a way to get his kids to connect with others while giving them an authentic audience. As Twitter is a social media platform, every Chapter Chat is an opportunity to discuss and guide students in the many aspects of Digital Citizenship. As well as learning to understand a platform like Twitter, it is an opportunity for my students to practise their quality commenting (positive, helpful and thoughtful) and writing skills. As the Twitter chat id displayed on the class whiteboard we have an ongoing discussion on the comments posted in relation to Digital Citizenship, quality commenting, and writing skills. 

What I enjoy about Chapter Chat as a teacher is that I and my students get to enjoy books at their level, and get an opportunity to discuss it with other students around NZ. While it also provides deeper thinking about the contents of the book with questions for an independent reading task.

So what do the students think? Before deciding on whether to continue Chapter Chat next year I surveyed my students. As you can see from the results
to the left, the majority of my students love it and wish to continue. So we will, and hope to see you there too.

An example of my students comments on Chapter Chat. I used Storify to capture a selection of our class tweets.

Monday 12 December 2016

My Classroom in 360

Earlier this year I posted a 360 photo of my classroom using Photosynth - the app is no longer available :-(.  However I like to record how my classroom looks at the end of the year because it reflects the learning and wonderful things my class has created over the year. It shows a bit of our personality.

I think my classroom is more vibrant this year with more student work up, mainly because our wonderful caretaker put up hanging wire around my class to help with the lack of wall space. I love it, the students love to see and show of their work on display, and parents enjoy being able to walk around and view the students art and learning. Now it's time to clear the walls for a fresh start next year.

Thursday 8 December 2016

Learning to Teach Online

I am the type of life-long learner who likes to manage their own learning pathway, and so I seek out courses where I can manage both my time and learning context. Coursea is one of my favourite online learning provider because they have a huge range of courses designed by top universities around the world.

This week I completed The Learning to Teach Online (LTTO) MOOC which aimed to develop an understanding of successful online teaching strategies. This multi award winning open educational resource developed by Dr Simon McIntyre and Karin Watson was easy to follow as well as being a good model on online teaching and course design

https://www.coursera.org/account/accomplishments/certificate/TQVFYQ72P87Y

Wednesday 7 December 2016

Hour of Code

It's that time of the year again when we get to inspire students and teachers alike by exploring the learning, problem solving and fun of the Hour of Code; of course the site is available all year round. The bank of code games themes has grown huge and there is something for every age, gender and interest. Of course my favourite is the Minecraft coding.
https://code.org/learn

Wednesday 26 October 2016

Parent Engagement Teacher Inquiry using Class Dojo

This year I worked collaboratively on my Teaching Inquiry for 2016 with another teacher, and we were also accepted to follow this inquiry under the umbrella of the Ministry of Education's Digital Era Learning Teaching & Assessment (DELTA) Programme - Grassroots Ideas, which has a focus on 'Investigating and sharing ideas to help schools around New Zealand to effectively use digital technologies for teaching and learning.'

Last year, we identified parent engagement in student learning (particularly digital based learning) as a concern that needed to be addressed. We wanted to target three areas of parent engagement that are an integral part of student learning: (Engagement in the school - knowing what is happening and being involved, engagement in the class of their child/children, and engagement in their child's learning).

Our Inquiry will focused on the use of the app Class Dojo to connect with parents and whānau. We will focused specifically on the use of Class Story (a quick and easy to use and access page), where 'snack bite' posts with or without pictures are sent instantly to invited members. We also investigated the use of another Class Dojo feature; Messaging, to send notices, general information and individualised information whenever necessary. 
Our inquiry was a huge success with 94% of whānau accessing Class Dojo at least once a week. Parents felt they were more engaged with the class learning and able to have focused discussions with their child about their learning, as parents knew what was happening in class. As teachers we felt our relationships with parents were more solid with almost no parent issues; we believe this is because parents felt they had a more personal connection with us.


Our inquiry is available to view on our website: http://otongagrassrootsproject.weebly.com

Now in Term 4 we are sharing this initiative with our staff, with the vision that they will begin to use it themselves to build parent engagement in their classrooms. In order to spread the benefit of our inquiry into our community of schools, we will share our inquiry with other educators at various local events. I have already started this at Educamp Rotovegus 2016. See our staff presentation below.

If you have had any experiences that would add to our learning, I would welcome your thoughts.

Saturday 22 October 2016

Collaborative Teachers

This year I have been collaborating with Jemma, the teacher next door. I have planned and taught collaboratively with two other teachers at a previous school. You can read my blog from then entitled: Collaborative Teaching; my research, experiences and reflections

Jemma and I begun at the end of term 4, 2015 planning a shared topic on Vikings for 2016. We enjoyed working together and decided to continue to work together for the rest of the year. We met once a week spending lunchtime and after school for the rest of the year. I felt confident that we both had the same work ethic, but had separate strengths from which both would benefit and grow.

Jemma based her 2016 Teacher Inquiry on our collaboration and how if affected her students learning. With permission I have included a few of her reflections below that show how she felt about our collaboration.
Reflection: I am feeling totally inspired by today’s meeting with SHAUN. It is clear just from one meeting that we have a common agenda this year. I am exciting to take all my planning from paper to online, where it can be shared and worked on at any time.

Reflection: I cannot believe I have been planning on paper for so long. All the hyperlinks make so much sense. I feel a sense of relief knowing that I can’t loose anything and that it is all one click away. The benefits of working collaboratively are already clear. I am learning how to use ICT to make my planning more efficient and better organised. SHAUN has been amazing at showing me how to use Wiki and I think my structured thinking around planning has helped us to organise our term ahead.

Reflection: I couldn't believe how quickly we managed to get all the resources we needed for our students organised. When I do this task on my own I can spend a whole day hunting around. It literally took ¼ of the time.

Reflection: I have admired SHAUN and his involvement in the online teaching community. Taking inspiration from him I discovered Chapter Chat this year an online community that read the same book to their students all throughout New Zealand and then once a week answer questions and share tasks on Twitter. This community has changed the way in which SHAUN and I do shared book and has really showcased how learning can be done online to our students and to ourselves.Reflection: We also had a moment in term 2 when we were planning and unfortunately SHAUN was unwell, but because our “online community” was so well established we were able to continue planning for term 3 without being face to face. We took full advantage of google and were communicating with one another via messages as we planned. It was a real ah ha moment in the way in which technology can give teachers many advantages.


Student Voice 

“I think it is cool because it is like having Two teacher” 

“Because we get to work with different people other than our class”
“Because I don't like how noisy they are and I don't know them that well”

Observation

Observer: Lynne                      Date:22.09.16
Relevant goals: To get feedback on our collaborative planning practise
Focus students: Reflection on student needs and how we will cater for this.
Teaching focus: LTP, weekly planning and assessment

Jemma and SHAUN have been working collaboratively for this year as a way of trying to manage large classes and increasing workloads of planning, assessment, evaluation and digital learning. They were concerned that the time they were spending planning and organising on their own single cell classes was having an adverse effect on their actual teaching time and therefore wondered if ‘sharing the load’ through collaboration would enable them to work smarter whilst also giving their students the teacher time they need.

I have enjoyed watching the growth in their collaborative effort. They interact well and constantly share ideas. They meet regularly to plan and review their lessons. Through working together and sharing they have become more aware of the strengths they have as teachers and this has had positive spin-offs for their classes. For example; the Te Reo programme is running very well, the ICT progression in the students is noticeable and the coverage of the future focus themes is well developed.

This collaborative approach has been discussed with me on a regular basis and as a result has led to more collaboration between Sonja and myself.

Working with Jemma has improved my confidence in my planning, increased my lesson engagement, deepen the focus and range of learning for students, gave me a greater understanding of my students needs and the curriculum, lowered stress because two heads and four hands are better than . . .  However know we had such good success for ourselves and our students because we have a good relationship, we communicate openly, we respect each other and we know that we both put in equal effort.


Wednesday 12 October 2016

Ulearn 2016


uLearn16 took place in my hometown at Rotorua’s Energy Events Centre on 5 -7 October 2016. uLearn is an annual conference for educators in New Zealand that provides inspiration and professional development through three days of keynote speakers and breakout workshops. The conference also provides an ideal opportunity to network and connect with educational learners, to share ideas and grown as teachers.

Presenter: Jacqui Sharp @sharpjacqui
Jacqui took us through her own teaching style; from resources, planning and assessment, with a focus on student agency.

Key idea: Maths Student Agency = multiple learning opportunities for all learner types who can self-manage their learning and goals + MANY focused resources:

Planning game design with students using narrative structure as a scaffold.  Game design is a good collaborative project that can be used to allow students create something based on their own knowledge and research. It is easy to integrate this across the curriculum and have some fun.

Key idea: games and storytelling are engaging and allowing students to design their own games within this scaffolded structure can build collaboration and student agency.


Coding in the classroom with Swift
Swift is the OS programing language for coding apps. Apple have create Swift Playground to teach this language. However Swift Playground only works on iPads and Macs. Although an exciting coding workshop, I don’t believe it’s right for primary age. Better choices would be Scratch and HTML coding.

Key idea: anyone can learn to code apps.


This is a card game using teams who have to put together cards with clues and guess who or what it represents, then trade cards with other teams: basically a grouping game. However the card clues were difficult even for us, perhaps if we used the framework to create cards based on curriculum areas, but teamwork and trading would have to be scaffolded and taught. Seems very time consuming for little reward.

Key idea: a grouping game.


The concept is that teams must find clues to break into a locked box to solve a puzzle or mystery. Clues can be in almost any form, but the locks provide some interesting math problem solving.

Key idea: a collaborative puzzle challenge encourages communication and critical thinking; plus it’s fun.


Overall it was a fun learning and networking experience that has inspired me once again. Lastly a huge thank you to Otonga Primary School for encouraging and supporting teachers to extend their learning at @ulearn16.

Wednesday 31 August 2016

Reflections on a Month of 1-to-1 Laptop (& OneNote) Program

MicroSoft
Teacher Academy OneNote
For a month all my students had their own personal HP laptop; this was our first experience as a 1-to-1 device class. The Microsoft laptop loan program is run by Ngā Pūmanawa e Waru (NPeW). Once you apply and are accepted into the program you will get an expert teacher from NPeW (and from Microsoft) to assist in setup, planning and some classroom time. When 1-to-1 is not your normal way of teaching then suddenly having these devices can disrupt your learning unless you plan, be flexible, and use the experts they provide. Luckily NPeW and Microsoft have experienced teachers who bend over backwards to help you make this a success for your own inquiry and for daily learning.

As part of the program, you the teacher are expected to reflect and share your journey. As I also focused on using the Microsoft product OneNote, I used that for planning and reflections. In my blog reflections on the 1-to-1 program using OneNote, I record my setting up and using OneNote as a learning management system. 

Having a focus for yourself as a learner and for your students will help you from being overwhelmed. My focus was using OneNote in the classroom and developing student agency. However as much as I enjoyed learning about and using OneNote, I would suggest teachers focus on using more familiar programs like the Microsoft suite for this limited time. Our first two weeks involved many technical difficulties, mainly because we were the first class to use them, but also because OneNote was a 'new' software for all involved.

OneNote is a wonderful piece of software that incorporates digital work-spaces, workbooks, pages, sections or folders, private and shared all in one. I particularly found this compactness to be one of my favourite features. I did all my planning there, anecdotal notes, shared timetables, readings and activities. Groups collaborated on shared pages, or worked on their own private OneNote, which I could see with a click of a tab. Plus I had OneNote almost constantly projected on my whiteboard as our guide and teaching space. My first OneNote Tour was made in week 2. Below under Screencasts, you can find links to my OneNote screencasts.  
 
Some positives about OneNote: easy to share pages or collaborate on a page, being able to draw as well as type on any page, picture or PDF, the ease of a whole class document management, ability to make students more accountable (see all their folders, mark their work, proved tick boxes for activities), everything in one space, abilty to add video and voice recordings to pages (I used this for feedback and students used it for learning activities). 

* Images are from the student voice reflection survey.
Some negatives about OneNote: one of the potentially best features of OneNote, the Learning Tool never work for us. Learning Tools is an add-in to include in your teacher OneNote. It converts PDF's and images into text using optical character recognition (ocr), plus will read the text and help the student identify nouns, verbs, and adjectives to aid comprehension. Also, students can dictate voice messages (reading / summary / comprehension questions etc.) on the page; wow! Check out my quick screencast on OneNote Learning Tools. Another awesome tool is the Clipping Tool which clips screencaptures and will add it to the page you specify with a hyperlink 'credit'; again it didn't work for my students so we used Windows Snipping tool. In OneNote you can share and collaborate on any page you specify, or anyone can work together in the Collaboration Space; however we found the syncing was too slow and not consistent across the class, so we used Google Docs or Padlet for real time collaboration. 



The HP laptops are quite small at first impression, but the kids loved them. They enjoyed that they could use them as a laptop or a pad, as the screen was detachable. Of course having their own personal device that they didn't need to share seemed to increase their enthusiasm for research and getting their work done. Because it was a limited time period we did almost all our learning digitally! Exhausting and not practical! I would kill to have a permanent 1-to-1 device classroom, but have realized balance with paper, whiteboards, materials etc. is essential to cater to all learners and for the teachers sanity. 





Some negatives about the laptops were that some keyboards would fail. Windows updating at the most inconvenient times, and the styluses were either flat or not used much (very much to my surprise!).
When preparing for your 1-to-1 laptop program, you will need to consider some setup tips. Ensure all the laptops are fully powered and updated, and all keyboards and styluses are working. Also ensure all programs you intend to use are fully loaded. If using OneNote that means setting up Class OneNote and Learning Tools, and especially ensuring the OneNote 2016 downloaded version is on each laptop, as the web versions don't incorporate the drawing and learning tools. These laptops need to be well charged or they just stop working until charged enough, so setting up a charging station and system are essential from day one. The power station can get messy and unsafe very quickly, the photo below is just two days after a tidy up! My students checked their battery life every break, if below 50% they placed them at the power station and the I.C.T. team plugged them in. As the students know they won't be able to work without power they are very good at doing this job.
 
Students quickly became the experts. Our word of the week was RECIPROCITY, which we used often to celebrate the fact that student peers were the real experts. Although my I.C.T. team started as experts, by the end of week 1 most of the class was an expert at some aspect. In the last week I surveyed my students using a Google Form. Their reflections on the HP laptops and OneNote are in this blog post, but the full survey is this spreadsheet version of the results


Now we are back to a few devices to share and paper and pen. Yes, in many ways we are please to be back to using paper and pen, but in context this is because we did EVERYTHING digitally because we wanted to make the most of the 1-to-1 laptop opportunity. I and my students would still love to have 1-to-1 devices all year round, but I have learnt that like any learning, it needs to be a mixture of digital, paper, practical; integrating and supporting each other, which caters for all learners as well as growing digitally literate digital citizens.

Below are some supporting screencasts, tips and resources I used during this program. I hope this post will inspire you to try 1-to-1 and share your experiences with us.

Screencasts

  • A tour of my OneNote Class Notebook in the beginning. OneNote Tour

Tips & Tricks

  • If you draw on an image do not move or resize it as the drawings don't scale, they seem to be independent objects.
  • If the software finds a page conflict, it creates a backup highlighting the differences; handy.
  • If you hit tab you get a table. 
  • To resize an image, click on it and choose the bottom right  corner handle; it is the only one that keeps the proportions.
  • When you copy a hyperlinked text into OneNote, it automatically pastes a website citing link.  
  • Images won't act as hyperlinks (even though they have a link attached) if in a Section other than Collaboration Space (requires Control + click) and Content Library (requires a single click). Although text hyperlinks seem to work throughout.



Resources

Below are some of my learning resources that have helped me so far:


Useful readings

Microsoft announces new classroom-focused tools for Office 365 Education

Tuesday 26 July 2016

See my Classroom in 360

I like to take photos of my classroom for my own professional development records, to share with other teachers and for my own records. Usually I just take some photos, but this term tried an app called Photosynth by Microsoft. You just stand in one spot and rotate, allowing the camera to capture the empty spaces, then share. What is great is you can scroll around 360 degrees to view the classroom; try it out below.

How else could we use this fun photo app for teaching and learning?

Below: You can create a stitched 360 jpg image.

I have since learned that Microsoft have retired this app, which is a huge shame. The only other equivalents I found are paid like 365 Panorama.

Monday 18 July 2016

Scratch Coding Maze Game - Self Guided Lesson

Coding is fun, but it's also a challenging critical thinking exercise that requires persistence. There are  many learning benefits to coding that stretch across the curriculum; however if you need convincing read this great infographic: 5 Reasons to Teach Kids to Code.

Last year I taught a Gifted and Talented group Scratch, and since have been teaching my own students, although finding a way for all students to follow was my challenge. So this year (holidays :-) I created a Scratch coding lesson that can be self-driven by students, although you can use each section as a guided lesson too. It is an introduction and scaffolds students knowledge on the basic coding, along with the thinking, planning and problem solving. I tried to give it a Maths focus with the games being based on basic facts. It is still in it's beginning phase, I hope to put it on a website for teachers and students, plus add quizzes and support material, as well as re-doing the screencasts when I find time. I would love you and your students to try Maze Game and give me feedback with your game links in the comments.

Teachers please feel free to try this Maze Game coding with your students. I suggest you sign up for a Scratch account with your school email so that your students can share their work with you. I suggest you can take the lesson yourself and decide if you want the students to do it alone, or use it for guided lessons where you can focus on a particular teaching point.



Below is the finished Maze Game that has been embedded into this blog; the link will take you to the Scratch project page. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/116495873/

Saturday 11 June 2016

Playing in the Sandpit

On Friday I attended Connected Rotorua's session on Google Classroom along with with staff from nine out of the twenty Ngā Pūmanawa e Waru schools. We explored how others have been using Google Classroom and for me is was also about comparing Google Classroom with Hapara. Hapara is a paid LMS for GAFE schools that we currently use, however I am questioning which would be more suitable for our school. My first thoughts are that they do have some similar functions yet also mange bulk student work in different ways. I suspect Google Classroom is better suited to one-on-one digital classrooms which is my personal ideal, but as it is not a reality in my school I have a plan to test Google Classroom. Through Microsoft and Ngā Pūmanawa e Waru I am borrowing 30 laptops for a period in term 3 or 4 to run my class one-to-one and plan to use Google Classroom to facilitate this. Watch this space.

What do you use, or prefer?

Friday 3 June 2016

Using Minecraft to Develop Writing

​ This term I was asked by the Waiariki Literacy Association to present a workshop on using ICT to enhance literacy (see the flyer below).
Waiariki Literacy Association presents “Using ICT to Enhance Literacy Learning”.

I decided to share a small part of one of my units on using Minecraft to engage students in reading and writing using Minecraft. You can see my presentation below. I have removed the free lesson plan, but you can buy it on TeachersPayTeachers. I always reassure teachers that they do not need to know the game to get quality learning from it; use your students enthusiasm and knowledge, but challenge what they tell you.

We explored how to use one small part of Minecraft (animals) for reading and writing. We used our note taking and key ideas to create trading cards, with the intention of moving towards report writing. It was only a short workshop so I was just able to give the teachers attending a few ideas to get started, plus resources to scaffold the learning and at least give it a go on their own.

Reading to Learn PD


Educamp Rotovegas 2016

CcK6ujCUAAA3jk2.jpgEducamps are a wonderful free PD opportunity for teachers who like to manage their own PD, as well as sharing their own skills. Everyone shares their ideas and resources. We started with the Smackdown (see slides below) and due to interest I took a small workshop on using Class Dojo. Like all the best PD there was lots of back channel chatting and sharing on Twitter using the hashtag #educamprotovegas

 

Monday 8 February 2016

Change Page Size in Google Docs and Slides

As a regular user of Google Docs and Slides for teaching I often find I need their page sizes to be A4 to make printing easier. In this video I show you how to do this and also why I think Google Slides is a more versatile program to use than Google Docs.


Monday 1 February 2016

eTap Smartphone App for Teachers

 Are you an eTap school? eTap is a popular student management system in New Zealand schools. You must have a personal eTap teacher login to access this app.

Recently while preparing to start the new school year I thought about how often I had logged into eTap on my iPhone browser to find contact details or do the afternoon roll on the run. So I searched and found this free eTap app here; there is also an Android app here (I haven't tried it but assuming it is the same). Additionally, they have a @school Mobile app for parents to get information.


 Notices is the first screen you see after downloading and signing into the app. There are three tabs: My Pupils, Notices, Calendar.

Pro
I like this because we use them regularly and it's the first thing I'll always see.

Con
I can't add notices and that would be helpful.
 Calendar should be useful if your school uses the eTap calander, many use a Google shared calander.

Pro
I can see the whole month and less like to miss those meetings...

Con
I can't add to it.
 The My Pupil tabs brings up a list of all the student lists you have set up in your school system. I can see mine as well the rest of my teams students by room. When I click on my room a list of my students pops up with: profile photo, full name, and an arrow to access more information.

Pro
I can learn new students name by using their photos, unless none are loaded or the photo is really old.
Easy to scroll through your list.

Con
I can't add photos but I think that should be controlled by admin anway.
I can't adjust the student list by first and surname.
  
 Pupil
The pupil page has a profile photo, full name, year level, and room number as a header with three tabs: General, Contact, Medical. You can see the range of information they provide from the screenshots.

Pro
I can see the medical information on a student quickly.
All contact information is easily available and phone and email links are clickable.

Con
I can't take attendance on the app.
I can't make changes but I think that should be controlled by admin anway.



Overall I'm quite excited about this app and it's potential for me to quickly and easily access information from our eTap accounts. Now to actually see it in action ...