Five Frame Story Telling

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While we were up at Lake Rotoiti it was my job was to facilitate an activity with the principals which could be easily replicated in the classroom and which doesn’t require internet.

Firstly I give a hat tip to Amanda Signal and Jocelyn Mackay whose ideas I combined for this activity. I am a derivative.

I learnt from Amanda about five frame story telling- the title pretty much tells what you need to do. People take five photos that tell a story through those photos. For the principals I kicked it up a notch by giving them the theme of Leadership and they had to have the same prop running through the five photos.

From Jocelyn I had had the idea of making a CD ROM for each group with three different leadership type music tracks on each. They had to chose one of the tracks that best complemented the storytelling.

I had a number of tracks in my iTunes already but when I ran out of ideas I turned to Twitter for inspiration. People had a bit of fun helping me think of appropriate and less appropriate tracks.

People could chose the way they presented the photos but it had to be interesting and entertaining. The principals gave each other marks at the end- you can imagine how vicious they were in their marking but it was lots of fun.

There are a Flickr groups for the five frame story telling. This one for children and this one for educators.

If you are interested in viewing our plan click here. I was bad and I didn’t record the five photos that I used to show a five frame story. I should have.

Screen shot 2010-11-03 at 11.06.08 PM

Principals’ Conference- Lake Rotoiti

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Last week I had the privilege of attending part of the Nelson Principals’ Conference at Lake Rotoiti. I was there to facilitate an ICT challenge but I went up on the evening before so I could capture the dawn on the lake- something that I’ve always wanted to do. Here is my Flickr set that I’m really pleased with. Here’s the five frame storytelling outline that we completed. Well done Team Drummond for your spectacular presentation.

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They had David Gurteen talking about the Knowledge Cafe– the idea behind the knowledge cafe is to re-create some of the conversations that happen in the pub after the staff meeting, where people feel OK to really express themselves and challenge each other on an equal footing and say what they really think.

David quoted Theodore Zeldin on conversation, “Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, and engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.“

“The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person.”

Theodore Zeldin (b. 1933) Historian & Author

David Gurteen’s comments: “I love this quote and use it in many of my presentations and workshops, especially when I am talking about the meaning of dialogue. I also tell people in my knowledge cafes that this is the sort of conversation they should be having – not a conversation where they tell people things but a conversation where they listen and learn in other words a ‘learning conversation“.

At this point I made the connection to Dean Shareski’s 2010 K12 OnLine keynote where he said “I am a derivative.” Me too- I am a derivative of all the people I know.

Conversational dynamics are better with smaller groups of four or thereabouts. It sounds a lot like our planned cluster unconference.

The process of a knowledge cafe- small groups, conversation based around a question, 5-10 minutes, ask a few people to move to another group, others sit tight and continue- coming back together but don’t report back- try and have another big group conversation- everyone can contribute. By changing groups the dominant ones when moved tend to be less so after being moved changes the group dynamics.

‘Who would like to share something with the wider group?’ For a larger group you may need a mike. One big circle at the end. Finally ask each person for one sentence in reflection of the process or the new perceptions as a result of the conversation.

The key outcome from a knowledge cafe is what people take away in their heads- a deeper understanding of one another, a better appreciation of your own point of view and the perspectives of others. A better understanding of each other and thus improved relationships and collaboration.

I would like to give the Knowledge Cafe a go at Thursday’s lead teacher meeting and in my classroom. I think the world needs more conversation- people tend to talk past each other not to each other.

And a final quote from Theodore Zeldin, “Change the way you think, and you are halfway to changing the world.“

K12 OnLine Conference Keynote- A Week in the Classroom

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So here it is…

Welcome to my keynote for the K12 Online Conference. The whole process has been a learning experience for me as I made decisions about what parts of my classroom programme that I thought people may be interested in. I also pushed myself a little in publishing the video using iMovie09 which I wasn’t very familiar with.

When I showed my class the finished video they seemed happy enough with it and gave it a round of applause so I was pleased it got a tick of approval from my most important audience.

If you would like to wander through some of the links I mention in the video you may like to visit the presenter page on the K12Online site.

I started the class blog in 2005 and this Edublog in 2007.

I had no real idea how sharing what we do as a class and my reflections as a teacher would lead but it seemed like an interesting experiment at the time. It seems incredible to me now how I only started blogging and sharing on line five short years ago. The whole process has been transformative for me as a teacher.

The use of ICT has allowed us to share our practice in ways that have never been practicable in the past.

Before the availability and accessibility of online learning teachers were sealed in their classroom cocoons with few opportunities to visit others’ classes or learn from others’ experiences outside their neigbourhood.

The world of ICT has opened my eyes and the eyes of my children to a world of infinite possibilities.

My question for you is how can you share your classroom practice with others?

How do you collaborate and learn from others.

How are you able to offer children choices in their learning?

Please feel free to ask questions through the K12Online Conference Ning so together we can learn from each other.

The joy of a conference like this is that all of the content will be available on line whenever YOU want it, at a time and place that suits you.

To see everyone’s presentations click here or search for K12Online in iTunesU for download. Each presentation is only about 20 minutes long so they are in very manageable byte sized bits.

ULearn10

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I have been back a fortnight from the magnificent ULearn10 ICTPD conference in Christchurch and it is time to put my thoughts here for sharing.

A number of people have asked me what I got most out of it and for me the highlight is meeting the people. Once a year I get to meet up with many of the people who I connect with virtually throughout the year. Online or blended learning is a fabulous thing but you can’t beat the real life connections made with real life people. Through virtual learning I have made many friends, some of whom I will probably never get to meet but wouldn’t it be fun if we were able to get together. As an example of the ULearn experience I met Barbara Reid virtually some time ago, we met at ULearn, we became friends, she invited me to Hamilton to speak at her cluster call back day and this year we had a ULearn10 road trip from Nelson to Christchurch photographing and laughing our way down to Christchurch. Some people say that on line friendships aren’t real- they’re wrong!

Another really powerful take away from the conference was during the first keynote by Steve Wheeler. Amanda Signal was not able to attend to attend this year and I missed her ability to type, link, hyperlink, tweet and listen all at the same time. We needed a another way to archive Steve’s keynote so I created an open Google Doc and tweeted its existence. My network kicked in. It was exciting to see a heap of people viewing and editing the document in real time so I took a screen grab. Through the power of my network I was able to listen intently to what Steve had to say and record and share the notes.

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Of course we went to ULearn10 to learn. The learning for me started off with the the regional cluster feedback session on Tuesday afternoon followed by the Pecha Kucha. Ewan McIntosh introduced me to the Pecha Kucha presentation style while he was in Nelson but I was far too stressed with the timing and the slide moving to hear a single word he said! It was fun to hear some talented presenters share their ideas in this fast-paced, entertaining genre.

Then the conference started at full pace. Three days of fast packed learning. I was lucky that I got all of my workshops that I wanted with a mixture of personal interest and cluster goals in mind.

First up was ‘Finding Your Way with Digistore Learning Paths’ with Fiona and Rocky. I was pleased I went to this one as I had been struggling with making Learning Paths- I’m still not proficient but with a bit more practice I will get there. I need to use it a few more times to embed the learning.

Cluster wise I then went to ‘A Journey with MyPortfolio’ with a couple of teachers from Tawa Intermediate. The more practice I get with MyPortfolio the better. People say it’s easy but I haven’t made sense of it yet. I sat next to a woman who bred equestrian horses and she showed me her stunning photos.

I loved Dorothy Burt’s Apple sMACdown. The Smackdown was an opportunity for a pile of Apple types to share some of the cool Apple apps. Geek heaven. I was wracked by iPad envy at that stage- surprised at how many people already had one. And now the 11inch MacBook Air has come out I want one of those as well. Probably more than an iPad! Great for conferences and travelling!

Then there was the conference dinner on Thursday night- what goes on conference stays on conference.

Friday morning I was on the graveyard shift with my presentation- The World is my Classroom. I tried to be all sparkly and fun and only got half way through- if you were there and wondered what happened to the last half of the presentation it is here!

Then came the long drive home!

On my return Cheryl Eden from Richmond started a ULearn wiki where people could open out and share their presentation out from behind the ULearn usernames and passwords. We have asked people if it is OK if we share their presentations in this way. If you read this and would like to add your resources to the wiki it is totally open and I am monitoring it so please share your learning.

Thank you very much to everyone on the CORE team who make these conferences such a great learning experience.

You may like to add your reflections orally here.

Where do you hope learning that uses ICTs will be in 5 year’s time?

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Picture 4I have been asked to write a few sentences for the Education Review Publication on where I hope learning that uses ICTs will be in five years time. In case my responses never end up going to print here is what I wrote…

  • In five years I would hope that all schools would have reliable access to ultra fast broadband so they can access the work of others and  effectively publish content that they have created. Alongside this children need appropriate hardware and a decent  wireless connection to connect to that network. In five years time I envisage that we will have more access to more mobile devices because of their portability, price and popularity.
  • I see cloud computing being more and more prevalent. It just makes sense to able to access web based resources where and when you need them without the need for a specific operating system or device but I see the lack of bandwidth as a major challenge.
  • I would hope that many more parents would be able to participate in their children’s learning through sharing their children’s learning journeys on line — through blogs, wikis, e-portfolios and on-line collaboration.
  • I see social media playing more of a role in on line learning. People are social animals and we can learn so much directly from others who form part of our personalised learning network.

What would YOU write?

Share, Share, Share!

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On Monday our Link Learning ICTPD cluster had the privilege of having Ewan McIntosh spend the day with us. Ewan came to us directly from Scotland at the start of a whirlwind New Zealand tour. We had a great turnout with people coming from over the hill to Salisbury School in Richmond.

This was the first time I had organised such an event and it went fairly smoothly although we were unable to get internet access for Ewan for the first half of the day. We could either have a beautiful but small room with one ethernet cable or a larger spacious room with no access. For Ewan to be internet-less made it hard for him and hard for us.

The local newspaper turned up at lunchtime and interviewed Ewan. We set up a fake photo and I got my picture in the paper! They cropped me from the digital version of the interview- life’s like that!

I took copious notes from Ewan’s presentation but I thought I would compress them down a few critical points as take aways.

For me it came down to one word-

SHARE

Ewan encouraged us to share our practice. We have an obligation to those not able to attend a day like this to share our practice- the good and the things that didn’t go so well.

I found that I related a lot to this part of Ewan’s talk. Having just landed this fabulous job as Link Learning ICT Facilitator I would never have been able to do this job effectively if I had not begun sharing my practice only five short years ago. There are lots of incredibly awesome teachers out there that only small groups of children and their parents know about.

If you share your teaching, your classroom, you do open yourself up for a whole new world of collaboration and learning. I have been asked to keynote a strand of the K12 On Line Conference later this year by making a video ‘A Week in My Classroom’. My first impulse was to compress a month’s worth of ICT into a ‘pretend’ week but on reflection I think I will make a more honest video- the trials, the successes, the challenges. We’ll see how it goes as I share it!

What are some of the things that are barriers to our sharing?

  • Time is always a biggie and Ewan suggests we start a 100 hour challenge. Carve out an hour a day for the thing that we set our desires on doing and then do it for one hundred days. At the end of that time you can evaluate how well it went. You can’t say you gave your goals a decent shot at it unless you actually do it. Don’t expect perfection- be happy with ‘pretty good’. I recall an interview with Sir Peter Jackson when he said, “Films are never finished, they are only abandoned.” You can waste a lot of time trying to perfect projects- just do it!
  • Lack of momentum– leverage your project- think of things that you can do to nurture your project- to make it more successful. Pitch it to others with a ‘hook’ of having something in it that they want or would find useful for them- personalise it. Get others to buy into it to make your project sustainable.
  • Fear– fear of people knowing about your practice. I know that some people think the things that I blog share about are irrelevant but I get to moderate the feedback and the comments! In all my days of blogging and sharing I have never had to delete anything but spam in the way of feedback. People are either supportive, lurking or silent. In 2005 when I first started blogging I never really gave thought to the consequences- I just did it cos it seemed like an interesting thing to try. I wasn’t afraid because I didn’t know that anyone else would read or know what I was doing anyway. The benefits of sharing my practice has been HUGE. I now have a wide circle of supportive, helpful peers that I can learn from because we SHARE. These people are scattered around New Zealand and overseas- not necessarily in the classroom next door.
  • Not having the gear–  People who know me know I like the shiny toys as much as any Apple girl would but in my classroom I have a lot less gear than lots of others but I still do OK stuff. I have a data projector that sits on a disused fish aquarium stand and it shines onto an ordinary whiteboard with cords running across the floor to the wall socket. I have my TELA laptop, three netbooks and two old eMacs and a wireless internet connection that is sometimes dodgy in the way of kit. I supplement that an old handi-down digital camera from home and my iPod I got free with my home laptop. No Interactive whiteboard, no ceiling mounted data projector, no iPad, no Flip video, no Apple laptops, no computer suite! Fancy gear can help but is not a deal breaker. Last year we had one data projector to share among the whole school. I remember before we got that data projector we just gathered around the eMac!

So those are some of the things that can put people off sharing but the benefits can be enormous.

  • If you share your practice with others, they will share right back at you. As an example some people get on Twitter, follow a few people and immediately start asking for things because they have heard that Twitter can be really useful for finding out stuff, they then wonder why no-one replies and then say Twitter is just stupid. Firstly you need to connect with a circle of people who are interested in the same sorts of things as you. Then share some of your practice- build momentum for your project or idea.
  • If you share you don’t have to do all the work yourself. For example – Delicious– You take a little bit of time to register, put a couple of bookmarklets in your toolbar, add me to your network, network with the teachers that I network with and save some fabulous resources into the cloud for you to access after you have handed back you TELA laptop. This whole task would take about ten minutes but you would then have access to a rich resource base on all things educational- far better than a random Google Search and all there at your fingertips no matter what computer you are using or where you are.
  • Collaboration– if you are sharing with others you automatically open the door to others pitching in to build your project with you. As an example last term I set up a maths basic facts wiki so that parents could access our basic facts worksheets from home and help their children with learning and children could play on line games that supported them at their level. I then asked my Personal Learning Network to contribute more activities that they knew about. The resource is now considerably richer because of that collaboration.

Ewan shared a lot more throughout the day as well but these are the things that I particularly wanted to expand on in this blog post. We have an obligation to share our learning and our practice so that others who weren’t able to take a day from their classrooms can learn too.

There were eighty people at Ewan’s day in Nelson. So people what are you going to share?

My more detailed notes from the day can be found in download form here.

Cheers Ewan

NEWSPAPER ARTICLE 10 AUG 2010


Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Life is not a race to be first finished

Why would a school pay good money for a Learning Management System?

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In my new job I have been on a bit of a mission to find out more about Learning Management Systems (LMS)- specifically Moodle, Ultranet and KnowledgeNet which have the MoE big tick as well as other systems that might be out there for schools to chose from.

The first question I suppose would be, ‘Why would a school want a Learning Management System at all?‘ Is it just because everyone else has one?

What a plethora of choice- I bet there are more that I don’t know of.

http://www.moodle.org.nz/

http://www.ultranet.net.nz/

http://www.knowledge.net.nz/

http://www.google.com/educators/p_apps.html

http://www.atschool.co.nz/

http://mahara.org/

http://myportfolio.school.nz/

http://www.spikeatschool.co.nz/

I want to be able to put a set of questions of any LMS and compare responses so I thought I would pose them here and see what  friends of my blog think.

  • What do you get in an LMS above what is already available on the internet for free?
  • What benefit does an LMS add to a child’s learning?
  • Would parents have access to the LMS and on what level- would the child share their username and password with their parents and thus have access to everything- even the ability to change a child’s work. Or would the parent have separate parental access.
  • Would your LMS be able to be hosted on your own server or would you need to have it some place else like in the cloud or with a provider?
  • Can children develop their content within the LMS or would it more for a snapshot of a ‘finished project’?
  • Is there a visible (non- passworded) option for sharing content with those outside the LMS?
  • How collaborative and creative can an LMS be?
  • How can I share the learning progressions of children in an LMS, with parents, with community or with others.
  • Can I, as a teacher, personalise the LMS with features how I want them to be? Can the children personalise their own pages?
  • Can you embed content from Web2.0 apps. If so, how easy is it to embed content from Web2.0 applications?
  • On leaving the school can a child archive their content for a time when they are no longer able to access the school network?
  • Can the content and assessment created within an LMS be portable to another LMS?
  • Does the LMS synch with a School Management System. Now there’s a whole new can of worms- SMS!
  • If content can be archived what format would it be in?
  • I know it’s not about looks but it is. How appealing and navigable is the format for all levels of the school. We have children from five years old up to twelve. Would the LMS cater for them all?
  • How much bandwidth would a school need to be able to sustain the LMS?
  • How much support would the average teacher need to get to grips with the LMS? Is it something that I could work out for myself or is it that tricky that you need on going user group or expert input to master?
  • How much would it cost to set up and implement the LMS initially and then what on going costs, fees would be incurred?

If you can think of any other questions please post them in the comments and I will add them here for a more comprehensive set of questions. I have found this pdf on TKI that has heaps of more detailed questions you could put to a LMS to help confuse matters even more.

A problem as I see it is that you often only see inside an LMS if your school uses one. You only know what you know. Hopefully someone will read this post and help me with this question.

If you use an LMS and like it or dislike it could you please let me know which one you think and why.

Please don’t feel the need to comment in a logged in way- just add anonymously if you feel your comments may play against your current school practice. I want to know what you really think. If you would rather add your comment via email to me I will add it anonymously.

Here’s what Ewan McIntosh thinks about ePortfolios- obviously not behind the fence of a walled garden. Click here if the video plays hard to get. I have been told that the video will be updated after the weekend and it will actually play properly- I will re-embed it then.

Greg Gebhart talk about Cyber-Safety

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Here area my notes from Greg Gebhart’s presentation at the Teacher Only Day at Marlborough Girl’s College. Greg Gebhart is a former teacher who now works as a consultant from Australia on the use and implementation of new and emerging technologies. Greg’s specialist areas include the use of Web 2.0 technologies and internet safety for children. ( My thoughts are in italics ).

A profile is being built of how children use the net- for homework, for Google and for games. Primary children generally have at least three email account-  school, home that you get with your internet account, two hotmails which has MSM as well, one as a website email log in, and another to send spam to, personal, private emails, google gmail, yahoo email for chat and (for me Flickr).

It takes time from the send and receive, texts are instant so that is why they are preferred by kids. With email you have compose and wait for a reply- texting is so much more now.

Our task it ensure children understand that when people have a thousand friends on Facebook not everyone is good just because people have a happy photo in their profile. Moshi Monsters which is very popular with the littlies encourages five year olds to go collecting friends- discuss at that age that you need to know who your friends are. Moshi Monsters is a safe game but can teach bad habits about friend collecting for later on.

On line team gaming- RuneScape for younger kids and WOW for the older. Team games last about three hours and there is no pause or save- that’s why kids don’t want to stop ‘cos they let their friends down or leave the game early which leads to other players being mean to the member who has had to leave early to go eat. (Hadn’t thought about that aspect before). Some kids get up early and play at 3am NZ time cos that’s when Europe gamers get up- they go back to sleep and pretend to have slept through the night!

Texting at all hours- interrupted sleep- one kid wakes and texts another, leads to another and leads to MSM as its easier to chat in on line chat than to text repeatedly. It might be an idea to make a rule of keeping the cell phone out of the bedroom but then some kids carry two cell phones- one as a dummy to hand over if called to task, the other is the ‘real one’.

What parents can do to ensure their children are safer on the internet. If the computer has to be in the bedroom tell children they have to have it facing the door and keep the door open. This doesn’t stop risky behaviour but stops high end risky behaviour.

Facebook Terms Of Service says you have to be 13 years old but many younger children have accounts, sometimes set up by older siblings. If parents say no to kids joining up to things like Facebook they are likely to go out and do it anyway so parents may be better to say yes and keep an eye on things in the open.

Mobile phones -younger are getting cellphones as hand-me-downs from older siblings and parents as they trade up. (Still can’t get my iPhone4 here in Nelson). 20% of secondary students own two mobile phones with two carriers- one to hand over to teachers or parents if they’re confiscated. They are selling phones now with two SIM card slots so they can cope with two carriers. (Ask kids in your class what it is that they do with the internet at home and what devices they use- would be interesting for my Appleby kids).

What some young people are doing that can be damaging.

  • Kids take their phones to parties- put up not so good images, someone else takes a photo and puts it on Facebook but not tag it so the victim doesn’t know there are compromising photos of them on the net. They get mean things said about them.
  • Sexting- taking inappropriate photos and sharing them- imagine what happens when friendships turn sour with incriminating photos on the injured party’s phone.
  • People’s email address when applying for a job can exclude them for being followed up eg sexybabe42@hotmail.com is unlikely to elicit a job interview.
  • Prospective employers are Google searching + Facebook finding to cull the ones with compromising digital footprint.
  • Formspring is a questions and answers website. The site allows its users to set up a profile page, from which anyone can ask them questions and also post comments. The questions and their given answers are then published on the user’s profile page. It can open the door for harassment and bullying, due to the anonymity of the entries.
  • Chatroulette is a website that pairs random strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website randomly begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor. You can imagine some of the inappropriate randoms that connect this way.
  • Moshi monsters for the very young is very popular but you have to feed your animal every day- it is addictive. (A bit like Twitter).
  • Call of Duty has an R18 rating but primary school children are playing it.
  • Facebook- people need to check their Facebook settings to..

Set your site to private
Remove flirty photos
Remove flirty nicknames
Remove surnames
Don’t friend randoms
Remove mobile numbers
Keep the people who can see all your stuff to friends- not friends of friends.

  • Cyber bullying- generally the people being bullied are being bullied in reality as well- bullies are known to them. 10% of kids are bullied- 90% aren’t- so we have a chance to be proactive and stop it rather than be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff before the percentage grows and it becomes the norm. The people being bullied don’t do anything because they think the school can’t stop people being unkind, or they are worried it might escalate, or worried that parents will take away their technology so rather be bullied than take their cellphones (friends) away.

I have a few cyber safety resources and videos to add via Delicious that I hope are worth sharing.

http://delicious.com/AllanahK/Cyber_Safety

What do you think of the message in this video? I think I need to explore more about the things the children in my class do apart from use our blog and Google Docs!

Cluster Opening

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Today is a pretty special day for me.

For those who don’t know I picked up a part time job as facilitator of the regional Link Learning ICTPD cluster here in Nelson. For this term until the end of 2011 I will working four days a week for the cluster and one day a week for my class. It is an exciting time for me as I get to combine two of my favourite things in one job. For all my years of teaching children I have always loved doing it. There are have been some down times but they have never been related to working with the children. Now through my passion for using the internet, social media and promoting eLearning I have been given the opportunity to share my experiences with other teachers in thirty two schools around the Nelson area.

Wish me luck as I help build the plane while it’s in the air.

Brian Crosby’s TEDxDenverEd Video

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My mate, Brian Crosby, recently had his ISTE10 video published on YouTube. I thought I would embed it here to share. Brian is a classroom teacher who integrates ICT into his daily classroom practice to entice his class to participate and build learning power. He makes learning engaging and relevant.

We even get a mention as well. It’s almost like being there. One day, Brian, one day….

Making a digital video from a video cassette

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I felt the need to convert a video cassette to digital and thought I would quickly write it up here because I do it so rarely that I tend to forget and have to learn it all over again each time I do it! I am totally not a technician so I hope I call the cables by the right names. If you know more about it than me please let me know in the comments.

You need

  • Fire-wire cable – my Apple Mac Book Pro has an older version of a fire-wire cable that comes with the camcorder but I presume that whatever comes with your camcorder will do to connect the camcorder to the computer.
  • 3.5mm audio to RCA stereo cable ($5) on Trade Me.
  • A digital camcorder- ours is a Sony Handicam.

Preview

First of all find the spot on the tape that you want to digitise. Plug the RCA cable into the OUT at the back of the video player. I had to experiment a little to make sure I had the right coloured plug into the audio/video. I didn’t have a hole to put the yellow one into but I suspect it is only for fancy stereo sound. Michael Fawcett adds that the yellow end is usually video… white (or black) is left audio, red is right audio.

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Plug  the other end into the AUDIO IN on the camcorder.

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Turn the camcorder onto VCR and then onto record- REC CTRL. Push play on the video and record on the camcorder.

When it’s done push stop and rewind the handicam to the beginning on what you recorded.

Now upload it to your computer. I am trying to use iMovie09 more now and it does make quick editing nice and easy.

iMovie

iMovie09 has a nice direct upload to YouTube feature under SHARE. And now for your viewing delight is a video of my good self filmed about fifty years ago. It was originally recorded on film and then videoed as it played on a projector screen and now it has found its way into the 21st century.

You can Google solutions but the ones I have looked at seemed un-necessarily complicated.

Dairy Trainee of the Year

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I am very proud of a young friend of mine who has just been announced second place in the Dairy Trainee of the Year Competition held in Rotorua last night.

During the last school holidays she asked me to help her make a video of her practice as part of her submission to the competition. I had never made a ‘proper’ video before and enjoyed the challenge of working with only a couple of people and not having to entertain the rest of the class while trying to make a decent video.

Andrea had pre=prepared her script and written it out on a large piece of paper just like we do in class. Friends held the paper behind the camera just like a real teleprompter really. We worked hard to move the thing along and vary the backgrounds to keep the thing zipping along. Filming and editing took ten or so hours and then I took it home to burn onto DVD. Three minutes of video from all that- I have an even greater appreciation now of the work of real video producers and editors.

I was proud of the cutting of the audio and laying video and graphics under the commentary.

Well done, Andrea. Well done me. I just found out that Andrea got the highest marks in the DVD part of the competition.

Google Apps For Educators

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Not being known for being the sharpest knife in the drawer I have taken a fair bit of push to use Google Apps with my class although I use the Google Docs package extensively myself. The main reason why I never used Google Apps for Educators in my class is I didn’t know how to specifically and I didn’t know the usernames and passwords for the children in my class or even where they would log in. So after a bit of beavering away and a little help from my on-line Personal Learning Network I am there!

The final push that took me over the edge of thinking it might be something worth trying and spending my evening free time (ROFL) investigating more deeply was that because our wonderful COW of Apple laptops are basically dead or on their last legs and as we couldn’t afford to replace them in one hit we have leased three baby netbooks for my class. Frankly I loathe them but we do the best we can with what we’ve got and at least I have something apart from my TELA laptop for the kids to use. I also have two slow and troublesome eMacs bringing the total that my class has to six so I suppose I shouldn’t whine. Anyway, the kids want to draft their stories on the netbooks and of course they don’t have WORD on them and I couldn’t find the time to download Open Office.

So I found out where to log in for Google Apps and put a link to it at the top of our blog so the kids knew where to look. I fleetingly got myself Admin access to Google Apps and entered  the kid’s names and gave them passwords that were the same as their e-AsTTle log ins so we could remember them. Then my admin privileges were gone but the set up work had been done.

Admittedly the children in my class are generally fairly ICT capable for eight year olds and all but three have internet access at home so they catch on pretty quickly to new ideas. I had one session with the whole class in front of the data projector to show them where to log in and let them read the screen as to what they needed to do to create a new document, write and draw on it and share it with others within the domain.

They caught on exceedingly well and work has been pouring in ever since. We are basically in the PLAY stage of learning- where we discover what we can do with the tool.

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Last week we set a task on our homework grid to log in and do something on their docs. Marshall even set homework for ME to do using the docs.

Today Marshall who is eight decided it was time that we learnt to do presentations with Google Apps so he made a presentation on how to make a presentation.

Just in time learning on Sunday night before our Rocky Shore field trip my PLN brought me Tom Barrett’s post about using Google Spreadsheets. I quickly put one together to record our population counts from our field trip and when we got back we all entered the data as quickly as we could with multiple edits being visible on the whiteboard as we went. It was a good way to make sure everyone got a shot at logging in and recording their data and conclusions.

It’s all good and we are finding out new things together which is even better than me teaching kids how to do things my way. New things in new ways. All this in four short weeks. Yay

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This video summarises the useful updates to Google Docs.

Clever Gmail Signatures

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At school we are shifting lots of stuff into the cloud and the boss asked today if I could help him get the school logo as a signature at the bottom of his Google Apps Mail like it used to be when we went for desktop mail. You could add the logo as an attachment but that would be a total pain considering the myriads of emails that a principal would make in a day!

So, after some research and a little trial and error this is what I came up with.

First of all download Blank Canvas as a Firefox or Chrome Extension.

ImageOnce that’s done and Firefox restarted, log into your Gmail or Google Apps and click Compose Mail like you usually do. You will see little icons above the To field.

Hover and see what they do. I added the quick add remove as extras later on.

For an image I had to upload it somewhere else- I chose Google Sites but I suppose you could put it anywhere on the net.

As I am not an html genius I used the html editor on my blog to work out what the code needed to be to wrap around the image URL. In maths strategy land that would be called working backwards to problem solve I guess.

I know how to wrap html around a URL cos I use Blog Assist a lot- thanks Greg for that little gem.

I didn’t realise that <br> forces an extra line like tapping Enter so the name, URL and logo sit with a space between them but if you knew html that would have been really simple! Have I just admitted how little I know!

So the finished code looks like this..

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Does that make sense? I like it when I work at something and manage to get it working before midnight!

Discovery Time

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During the holidays I attended the Cutting Edge Conference in Porirua. As well as presenting I was able to attend a couple of workshops. One that intrigued me was about Discovery Time, run by Brenda Martin and Gay Hay co-authors of the book, Discovery Time- Developing Key Competencies through activity based, child-directed learning.

I gave it a go for the first time on Friday and it was a great success so I thought it worth sharing. Here are my notes…

Discovery Time is a 90 minute, action, activity based programme reminiscent of Developmental in the old days. The teacher is engaged with the learning as well. Parents have to be reminded of need to ask questions and not to solve problems. It is well planned with structured, activity based activities- it can bring the week’s programme together.

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Activities could be constructing, painting, drawing, weaving flax, parent passion, outside activities, skipping, sanding, sandstone carving, dressing up, making movies, carpentry, Lego robotics kit, shadow puppets, OHP stories, cooking, skipping, new food tasting, spending more time working on something that hasn’t been finished, Journal craft activities, clay, water play, trains, darts, juggling, musical instruments, clothing design, marble tracks. There are heaps more ideas in the book.

It is student centred learning based on play, creativity, activity and centred around the child. The teacher or parent doesn’t try to solve the problems for the child but leads the child to solve problems and challenges for themselves. The teacher lets go a little and hands the control more to the children.

The structure of the lesson-

  • Introduction- key competencies eg managing self- managing our gear- we discuss first what it would look like if we were managing ourselves well ( Y-chart).
  • Activity time- doing the activities from a menu of choices- children select what they would like to do- if there is an over-subscription the opportunity to do an activity will come up again another time.
  • Share what you’ve done, buddy-up, photos, share- before we pack up.
  • Reflection- after we’ve packed up. Thinking about what we’ve learnt. I would use Wallwisher to record our thoughts if I had more laptops to record with.
  • List of ideas from kids on what they would like to be doing next week. And also list of who has missed out that would like to have another go next week.

The Discovery Time book has a CD of ideas and resources to use to supplement the programme. Here is my planning sheet for the session minus the individual targeting section.

Our first session went really well on Friday with children totally ‘in the zone’ for the whole hour and a half. I liked particularly that I wasn’t ‘teaching’ the whole time and had the opportunity to sit next to the children as they worked rather than directing them to complete tasks. Children appreciated the opportunity to delve more deeply into an activity for an extended length of time. Next time I would add some more artistic, creative activities to our list of choices.

I liked the Discovery Time concept as we talk about creativity, child-centred learning, key competencies and life long learning it ticks all the criteria of what learning is.

As we finished Friday after a Discovery Time, a workshop with the St Johns First Aid instructor, Jump Jam and ANZAC assembly one cherub, about to go home for the day said, “It’s been just like a birthday party today!” A good way to finish the week.

The World is My Classroom

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WorldTomorrow at 10.30-11:45am and then again at 11:45 until 1:00pm I am presenting a workshop at The Cutting Edge Conference in Porirua, Wellington.

My workshop notes are on line and they describe some of the global projects that we have done over time. Click here to view the notes.

Please, I would love you to join us and help make the event authentic and interactive for the participants who will generally be new to the whole concept in practice.

Habits of Mind with Karen Boyes

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Last week I was able to attend a Habits of Mind workshop with Karen Boyes. I had a bit of an idea of Karen’s style as I had attended her Fish Philosophy workshop at ULearn09 and I subscribe to the EdTalks podcast in iTunes.

Here are my notes…

Habits of Mind are the things that will help children/adults sustain ourselves in 21st century. Rate of change is accelerating- who knows what the future will bring?

What is thinking? Cognitive brain actions- thoughts, feelings, opinions, strategising, multi-solutions, considerations, conscious, unconscious-thought.

“Thinking is when your mouth shuts down and your head keeps talking”. THINK- PAIR- SHARE. Remember the hand signals. ( I used to use the hand signals last year but forgot over the school holidays ). Time for processing- 7-10 seconds to process the question.

How would you want kids to think- risk takers, engaged, individual thoughts, justify their thoughts, curious, open to other people, links to outside the classroom text to world connections, thoughtful failure.

What dispositions do successful people have? And if so can we learn them? (Interestingly George the soccer guy came school last week and talked to the kids about the sorts of things successful soccer players do- fitted in nicely to my thinking).

“Habit is a cable, we weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.” Horace Mann.

‘Mindful Garden of Verses‘ by Marie Ciota- poetry book about HoM- they help you solve problems and know what to do when the wings fall off. We’ll have to get a copy.

Here are the Habits of Mind– I hope I got them all! Image

  • Translate and transfer information-
  • Persisting- not giving up- thinking of the frog and the crow cartoon.
  • Managing Impulsivity- think before you act. Successful people think it through before they act.
  • Listening with empathy and understanding- while listening we are busy thinking about what we are going to say! I know you don’t know but if you did know what would you think/say/do.
  • Thinking flexibility- e.g. The Real Story of the Three Little Pigs.
  • Thinking about thinking- metacognition- Successful people can talk about their thinking.
  • Striving for accuracy- the word is striving. ‘Never work harder than your students’. C3B4ME. Say there are 3 errors in your writing rather than you got seven right, if children think they ‘passed’ they won’t bother to learn or work out what the mistakes were.
  • Questioning- at the end of a topic they should have more questions than when they started.
  • Applying past knowledge to knew situations- use what you learn.
  • Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision. Getting the right/differnt word when writing, avoiding generalisations, exaggerations.
  • Gathering data through all the senses- like they do when they are little.
  • Creating, imagining, innovating- we can grow creativity. TED talks. Shift happens. Creativity is our point of difference from the production capability in India or China. (This ties in nicely with what Chris was saying last week– I am triangulating my data.)
  • Responding with wonderment and awe. FISH philosophy. WOW moment. I love the Fish Philosophy. It’s great to show happiness and joy and magic.
  • Take responsible risks- be OK with failure- try new things constantly. Failure is like manure- it sticks but it makes things grow fast.
  • Finding humour- kiwis like to laugh- be resilient- laugh it off and move on. (Personally I find that one hard- I don’t move on easily- I fester)
  • Thinking independently
  • Remaining open to continuous learning

    • Now the NZ Curriculum- T.R.U.M.P– Thinking. Relating to others, Understanding symbols and text, Managing Self, Participating and contributing.

    WEAVING IT ALL TOGETHER

    People need to be mindful competent- not automatic- thinking about the task that needs to be done.

    ‘Developing Habits of Mind in Elementary Schools’ by Karen Boyes. Moving from teacher led teaching and learning to student led mindful learning.

    Examples-

    • Do a word splash- other ways of saying the same things- key words, synonyms, phrases that convey the same meaning Wordle
    • How do we do that- what it looks like. Graphic- prove with 3 ot of evidence- Comic Life
    • Ask a child who is successful what they do to be successful. Celebrate it- Y chart look like, sound like, feel like. None of the HoM stand alone.
    • Pausing, probing, what do you mean?- to get more clarity of understanding.
    • What habits of mind do successful people display to help them be successful- sports people, authors, role models
    • Managing impulsivity. An owl or a frog- which personality type are you. Make a four part rubric co-constructed with the kids body parts of the frog.
    • Success-o-meter- pudding like, luke warm success, groovy success, outstanding.  Like a growth chart on the wall 0r our traffic lights.
    • Use the language of thinking- analyse, predict- use the right words, don’t dumb it down
    • A thinking buddy- Tony Ryan’s idea- soft toy to do your thinking with.
    • If you allow it you teach it.
    • Make trading cards- make eight cards- teacher gets one and rest are traded. Like our fitness cards with a digital photo of how it looks. Each for an example of HoM.
    • Bookmarks with the HoM with photos of HoM in action
    • Certificates on HoM to be completed by parents
    • The teacher needs to always model.

    We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Aristotle

    www.spectrumcommunity.ning.com

    Thanks Karen- a lot to go on with but good practical, real things I can do in my classroom this week and next term.

    Sitech IWB Conference Workshops

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    While attending the Breathe Technology Sitech IWB Conference I was able to attend a couple of workshops that I want to share with staff at my school next term. What better way to share than through the blog.

    First up, ‘What’s new in the Lab? Cool stuff from Google’ with Chris Betcher and a bit of my stuff mashed in as well.

    Google searching– there is more to it than typing in the box and pushing search.

    • Click the little circle next to pages from New Zealand to refine the search.
    • Put speech marks around a couple of words to get an exact match to the words other than a combination of either. eg “Allanah King” will get better results than Allanah King.
    • If you go to Advanced Search you can look for just pdfs or powerpoints. I have found this search to be quite useful when I want to make a slideshow for the kids. I can use someone else’s that is close to what I want and just tweak it a bit rather than starting the whole thing from scratch.
    • After you have made a general search you can click on Show Options- Chris pointed us to the Wonderwheel option which lets you see your search in a mindmapping sort of view.
    • The Time Line view puts your search on a timeline of when it was mentioned.
    • Also look at images, news, blogs to further refine and pinpoint your search,

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    Firefox– because Chris was using my computer and it wasn’t synching suitably with the data projector you couldn’t see the URL he was able to move the size of the address box by dragging the little space between it and the Google search box. It was only an incidental new learning but it will overcome an annoyance when synching with an un-cooperative data projector.

    A tour of some of the tools from Google Labs

    • How to embed a Google map– save it, put your markers or whatever in and click the little chain next to the word Link to get the embed code.

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    • Google Translate– in the past I have used external sites to write in other languages but would definitely use Google Translate next time as they have more options and a cleaner interface. I wonder if I can use this to translate National Standards information into Thai for one of our school families?
    • Google Account Settings- Log in to Google and go to Settings- Account Settings and see the Pandora’s box of Google things to play with- like web history.
    • Use 1 Click for Firefox one click downloading of YouTube Videos.

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    I was then able to attend couple of IWB specific workshops.

    I managed to get to Simon Evans’ workshop IWB and the Internet. Handily Simon provided us with a pdf handout of notes from the session that he was OK for me to share. Thanks Simon- you rock.

    Writing a single sentence and expand it- we have been doing this in class using our own data projector but it would be more effective moving the phrases around on an IWB. Wanted to share http://www.telescopictext.com/ but there wasn’t a right moment.

    Put a Google Map of your school on the big screen and have children write instructions of how to get from home to school.

    Inferring- reading a photograph- put a news photo on the big screen- children record their inferences, could be done with text as well. To get this screen shot I grabbed a photo from a news web site, dropped it into Pages, captured it with Skitch and used my Wacom tablet to write. Easier on an IWB but achievable with ordinary data projector. My screen in my classroom is just the ordinary whiteboard- in the classroom I would just write on the whiteboard- you couldn’t capture it but at least you could share it in real time with the whole class.

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    Thank you to Jason Neidermeyer, Simon Evans and the team at Sitech- you guys are great. It was a great learning opportunity.