Bi-Weekly Beaker #7

Posted on November 20, 2015 by corney

An integrated approach to Junior Curriculum

Want to know more about innovative approaches to junior curriculum? Philip Jellyman during his sabbatical visited a number of schools trying to do things different and this report summarises his findings [clicking the link will download a .pdf file]. Some of the schools he visited were Alfriston College, Albany Senior High School, Hobsonville Point Secondary School, Kelston Girls College, Manurewa High School, Ormiston Senior College, Wellington East Girls College and Whangaporoa College.

Tips, Tricks and Traps

Google Sheets for recording marks 

Most of us probably use a spreadsheet for some aspect of recording student assessments. Google Sheets has some nifty, more advanced features that may be useful for you.

Sparklines: Makes mini graphs to give you a visual overview of student progress

Lookup: Allows you to enter a raw mark and have a grade automatically entered.

Conditional formatting: Allows you to automatically add pretty colours based on conditions. Can even do a colour scale for a range of numbers.

Here is an example of one I use for Maths – I found it really useful for automatically looking up the curriculum level and KAMAR score after I entered the Raw mark. Maths Teachers – let me know if you want me to set up one for you.

Student evaluation with Google Forms

At the end of the school year, you may to complete your student evaluations with Google Forms. Here’s a link to a how do guide. This includes a link to a template so you don’t even have to create your own – no point in re-inventing that wheel… Also check with other members of your department as there are a heap of you who have been doing these with your senior classes.

More tips and resources @ TBC PL Website

Things that make you go hmmmm….Digital Assessment

In the midst of junior exams and marking, you may want give some thought to online/digital assessment. I’m trialling a digital exam with my Y9 Inquiry class this year through the Stileapp.com website. Here are some articles both for and against:

From NZQA

Digital assessment is the use of technology for assessment purposes rather than the traditional pen and paper. The use of technology for teaching and learning programmes in New Zealand schools is on the increase and NZQA has developed a digital assessment programme as a response.

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Concern at digital exams

Serious concerns have been raised about the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s plans to scrap paper-based exams and replace them with digital exams that can be sat ”online, anytime”. NZQA announced earlier this month that it aimed to put all subject examinations – minus a few that are incompatible, such as art – online by 2020.

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Bi-Weekly Beaker – #6

Posted on November 4, 2015 by corney 

Google +: http://goo.gl/EwwPef PL website: http://goo.gl/qB0Uve

From the TBC PL Google+ Community

TPACK Explained

“Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) attempts to identify the nature of knowledge required by teachers for technology integration in their teaching, while addressing the complex, multifaceted and situated nature of teacher knowledge. ” Sounds pretty dry right?The point is that we teachers usually have great pedagogical and content knowledge, but usually don’t have great technological knowledge. Do you agree? Is technological knowledge now an essential part of being a great teacher? Click ‘continue’ to take you to the original article.

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Hook vs. Do Now

I’ve often tried to consistently start my lessons with a ‘Do Now’, mainly for management/routine reasons but also to link in with work we have covered in the previous lesson. This article offers an interesting perspective on ‘Hooks’ that are “more about intrinsic motivation and self-discovery”.

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Tips, Tricks and Traps

Google Educator Training 

Google have recently improved their training programme to focus not just solely on how to use the various tools/apps but also about the pedagogy. They now have a comprehensive online teaching and assessing activities for a range of different uses and abilities. A good staring point is their Google Certified Educator Level 1.

These are good courses and can’t be rushed through quickly (I tried on my first exam for the Google Certified Trainer and only narrowly passed). Having said that, they are very worthwhile and can introduce you to features or uses you may not have come across. For more detail, go to this summary of the 4 different trainings.

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Archive a class – Classroom Help

At the end of the school year, you may want to archive a class to preserve the class materials, any assignments, and any postings to the class stream. You can still access any class files in Google Drive, but the archived classes are moved to a separate area to help you keep your current classes organised. An archived class can be viewed by you and the students in the class. However, when the class is archived, you can’t edit or add anything to the class until you restore it. Click this link to find out more

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More tips and resources @ TBC PL Website

Things that make you go hmmmm….

Self Driving Cars and Education . . . The Parallels

A great analogy between driver less cars and educational innovation. I think this confirms some of the programmes here at TBC-rather than wholesale change, we run smaller scale programmes to learn what works best in our context. Click ‘continue’ to read more…

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Bi-Weekly Beaker – Term 4 extravaganza

Posted on November 2, 2015 by corney

Annyeonghaseyo Staff

Headlining this weeks BWB is the local screening of ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ this Thursday, 22 October, 6.45-9.00 at Mt Maunganui College Hall. According to it’s promotional material this “EDUCATION DOCUMENTARY, officially recognised at top film festivals, investigates the challenges and possibilities for preparing young people to succeed in today’s innovative world.

Why this film is a MUST see:
-Directed by acclaimed documentarian Greg Whiteley and named among “the best edu-documentaries ever produced” by Education Week.
-Its artistic quality is extraordinary, and the story it tells will hold your attention.
-It points to the critical issues affecting education today and con­veys the urgency for moving our schools into the 21st century… but in an inspiring way.
-It poses questions rather than attempts to shove a point of view down your throat so you will be inspired about future possibilities.”

Wow – what a preamble.

Anneyeonghi gaseyo

Andrew 

Google +: http://goo.gl/EwwPef PL website: http://goo.gl/qB0Uve

From the TBC PL Google+ Community

Monitoring student use of devices in the classroom

Is monitoring student use of devices an issue in your class? From time to time when I suspect a student is off task I ask to see their browser history – this can reveal a pattern of a student not being focused on a set task. Another way is how you physically set up your class – an easy solution is to have the teacher desk at the back (like R24 & R25) with the student screens easily visible. Also, just wandering around the class can help you monitor what students are doing (although they do have some cunning tricks of quickly switching before you arrive). As a school do we need to investigate tools like Linewize? This product offers a way to make it easy to monitor student use (check out the demo video). Is this a solution to a problem we don’t have or do you think it is worth investigating further? Let me know.

Modern Learning Environments

A recent article titled ‘Top Schools give multi-million dollar classrooms a fail grade‘ set the NZ educational twittershere a buzz with tweets for and against. I think the classroom environment does have an effect on learning – for example at one extreme we wouldn’t teach in a class room with defaced desks, bland walls and broken chairs (and you can also ask the techie’s how they are enjoying teaching in their new block). Also, if you are teaching from the front then a rectangular classroom with individuals desks is fine. But if the focus is only on the types of furniture and layout of the physical space then that takes away from the focus on the learning. Just like how technology and devices are an enabler of learning, not a driver – I think there is some validity in being critical about the implementation of MLE’s. Having said that, in my experience with the Inquiry class, having aspects of MLE (different level’s of furniture, flexible table arrangements, break out spaces) does enhance the learning. I’m interested in other perspectives – what do you think?

Tips, Tricks and Traps

Google Drive templates 

Another great feature of Google Drive is the template gallery. In a Google Apps for Education environment, you can choose to share any of your Drive creations (from the core apps) as templates within your own domain only or share them with the whole world. Check out this link for some examples for schools:

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Make YouTube clips interactive with EDPuzzle

I had heard about this tool before and have taken the plunge and made a short Youtube electricity video into a quick formative assessment for my Y10 science class. Super easy way to ‘flip’ a classroom and the students found it useful. Find out more at the EDPuzzle blog or have a go at this basic EDPuzzle about polygons to get a sense of what it looks like for students.

More tips and resources @ TBC PL Website

Things that make you go hmmmm….

Breaking Traditional Moulds – Sam Sherratt – YouTube

This is a short 6 minute video that gives food for thought about the ways modern schools are structured.

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Google Education Roadshow

Posted on October 23, 2015 by corney

As part of a promotional tour around NZ by Cyclone, an IT hardware and software provider, I went along to Merivale School on Wednesday afternoon to see what the latest and greatest was. It started off well with a free Magnum icecream – much better than a coffee or muffin or cheese & crackers that is the usual fare.

The presentation had three main speakers.Firstly, Edward Carlson from Google (Aus/NZ) gave an overview of the products Google offers. The three topics were Google Apps for Education, Chromebooks, and Chrome device management. I was interested to learn more about Chromebooks. Although I’ve only seen demo’s, the thinking behind their design makes sense in an educational environment.  They are designed to boot in under 8 secs, battery will last a full school day, auto update every 6 weeks, virus free, lightweight OS and perhaps most importantly for schools – low cost ($250-$500)

I was also new to the Chrome Management Console. This allows administrators and teachers to have quite refined control on the use of the Chromebook by students. For example, a teacher can select certain webpages to load on startup, push out Apps and folders of bookmarks, to the usual setup and maintenance of the device.

Also of interest was Google Expeditions. This was launch earlier this year and seems more developed with more places to virtually go to. It is designed to work with the Cardboard headsets and left me thinking about the opportunities for use with my class. One idea is in the Ancestry unit, students can build a virtual tour to further add to their story of their ancestors migration.

The next speaker with Saunil Hagler. An ex-teacher, he now works for Cyclone as a Digital Learning Specialist. His part was going over some tips and tricks in the GAFE ecosystems. Some tips I picked up were:

  • VideoNot.es: a Chrome app that lets you make notes while watching a video.
  • Explain Everything is now in the Google Apps marketplace
  • Google Dictionary extension: look up and define words on any web page.
  • Read&Write for Google Chrome: a Freemium extension that does text to speech (including in Google Docs)
  • Google Drawing: you can make objects into a clickable link before inserting them into a Doc or Site (see this example).
  • Make a document a copy by changing the last 4 letters in the URL from ‘edit’ to ‘copy’
  • Have students add their revision resources as a post on an ‘Announcement’ page in Sites. Tag appropriately so other class can easily find and use them.
  • Classroom: can have classes for different groups within a class (i.e. one for each of the 6 maths groups in my class.)
  • TPACK: The point is that we teachers usually have great pedagogical and content knowledge, but usually don’t have great technological knowledge.

Next was Greg Reynolds who introduced himself as the Google Education Evangelist @ Cyclone. He didn’t speak for long – only to say he was available to help schools with anything Google.

The last speaker  talked about a product that helped monitoring student use of devices. From time to time when I suspect a student is off task I ask to see their browser history – this can reveal a pattern of a student not being focused on a set task. Another way is how you physically set up your class – an easy solution is to have the teacher desk at the back with the student screens easily visible. Also, just wandering around the class can help you monitor what students are doing (although they do have some cunning tricks of quickly switching before you arrive). The product was called Linewize. This product offers a way to make it easy to monitor student use (check out the demo video)

Overall, a worthwhile afternoon where surprisingly I was among 70 odd teachers but only one of a few (or maybe the only) secondary teacher. Come on secondary teachers – pull your socks up!

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Most Likely To Succeed

Posted on October 22, 2015 by corney

mostlikelytosucceedPriority One hosted a local screen of the EdDocumentary, Most likely to succeed at Mount Mauganui College on Thursday night. There were about 150 others there to watch this much talked about movie. The NZ debut had been at the ULearn ’15 conference and I had seen a couple of reviews.

The film starts with a description of the challenges that education faces. There was a nice piece on the rapid development of technology and how that is a key influencer for change in our education system.  It started with how ‘Deep Blue’ beat Garry Kasparov in chess in 1997, then described how the ‘Watson’ computer had won the game show of Jeopardy against past champions in 2011. The point is we now have computers being able replace not only simple mechanical tasks that we once had to do, like making cars, but also now intellectual tasks. There are now applications, such as Narrative Science, that have replace human jobs such as report writing.

postermostlikelytosucceedThe story then looked at the roots of the modern education system which occurred in Prussia reportedly as a response to a defeat in a war. This model is largely unchanged over the last century. We were then introduced to High Tech High, which was suggested as a model that education should adopt. In this school, teachers are employed on a one year contract and don’t have to follow a prescribed curriculum or teach to a test. This gave enormous freedom to what they planned for their students. Much emphasis was place on self directed learning in authentic contexts and the students were ‘assessed’ at an end of year exhibition night.

One key message I got was the analogy of a teacher like a gardener. This was made by a short interview piece with Sir Ken Robinson (of the TED talk – ‘Do schools kill creativity?‘ fame).

“Nobody else can make anybody else learn anything. You cannot make them. Anymore than if you are a gardener you can make flowers grow, you don’t make the flowers grow. You don’t sit there and stick the petals on and put the leaves on and paint it. You don’t so that. The flower grows itself. Your job if you are any good at it is to provide the optimum conditions for it to do that, to allow it to grow itself.” – Source

All in all, a good flick that prompted some thinking about some possible changes to my own teaching practice.

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