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Before attending the GAFE Summit, I had heard about this cutting edge school called Point England in South Auckland. It is part of the Manaiakalani cluster of schools (11 in all – primary and secondary) that have made significant efforts in digital learning with impressive results. They use a 1 to 1 student owned model, high quality network infrastructure including wifi access outside of the schools, and a resolute commitment for students to learn/create/share.

I was fortunate to be able to chat with two of the leading lights and attend a workshop presented by another teacher at the school (see previous post).

Dorothy Burt is the Head of Manaiakalani Professional Learning and Development. After she had given her presentation on the Manaiakalani Digital Teacher Academy I collared her to learn about her views on effective professional learning. From her experience, the following are important:

• identify lead teachers who will work with other classroom teachers to model eLearning practices in their classes
• regular staff meetings with eLearning focuses
• twice a term host ‘Teacher’s Toolkits’ where teachers can sign up for various mini workshops hosted by other teachers in the cluster.

These aspects correlated well to what I had learned from my Masters thesis all those year ago (click here for an executive summary) so great to know I was on the right track back in 2006!

Dorothy also mentioned lessons learned from the 1 to 1 roll out of Chromebooks. These included the importance of the student owning their own device (they pay it off at $3.50 per week over three years), and teachers needing to be able to get their hands ‘dirty’ with tech support so they can troubleshoot technical issues.

Russell Burt (yes, they are husband and wife) has been teaching in the area since 1991. Currently the principal and convenor of the Manaiakalani schools cluster he is a leading light in eLearning. We chatted about a range of topics from professional learning, volume purchasing of devices, role of the Board of Trustees but I was most interested to learn of what he thought other schools could learn from the Pt England experience. He identified 7 aspects:

1. Leadership
2. Clear strategic direction with student learning as the aim
3. Internal infrastructure (wifi access points, cabling, servers etc within the school)
4. External infrastructure (Internet provider, bandwidth of external ‘pipe’)
5. Device procurement (getting the best deal)
6. Professional learning of staff
7. Community involvement

So, great to have the opportunity to converse with these two inspirational educators and one of the many benefits of attending events like this GAFE summit – the chance to chin wag with other educators.

Session Description

By embedding the Key Competencies and Assessment as Learning alongside a 1:1 Google environment, we are creating students that have a true insight into their own learning – making the learning visible and rewindable. With learning at the forefront, Google makes so much possible.

Links to resources

Tips

Class blog. Created by Superadmin on GAFE, teacher is administrator and student it the author

Key competencies: each student chooses what they are working on (picture on list)

Questions: can parents access via dashboard? Yes, there is a setting in the Admin panel (3 check boxes??) to enable this. Parents log in (student user name and NSC (?) as password), see documents as .pdfs (possibly with comments).

Session Description

Let’s get a little geeky with Google Sheets. This session will give you hands-on experience with some of the features built into Sheets that will save you time and solve problems of practice. Learn some of the powerful tricks that Sheets can do that are missing from other spreadsheet applications you might know. We’ll be sure to explore some advanced formula as well as powerful graphs, maps and charts. Some spreadsheet knowledge will be helpful, but a spirit of exploration and a desire to make your life easier are required.

Session Resources:bit.ly/jrasexysheets

Notes

• Filter views will save filter view per user if sharing a large spreadsheet.
• Command + F for find (also access to find and replace)
• Split function: =SPLIT(H2, ” “) [will split a name up from combined to separate first name and second name]
• Capitalisation functions: =PROPER(H2) [capitilises name]; =UPPER(F2); =LOWER(F2)
• Unique function: =UNIQUE(A2:e) [summarises the unique records from a large list]
• Conditional formating: highlight the entire row Conditional Row Format
  =$F2=”VGA” Apply A2:M. Also alternate colour rows (great for printing)
• Sparklines for in cell mini graphs
• Create a graph with map data fro cities or countries.
• Embed graphs in blogs websites and they will update when you update the data in the sheet.
• Create a Gapminder type graph (interactive) but data must be formatted in table correctly.

Link to practice sheet.

Link to session websites.

Session Description

Our students are not all the same so a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching is not going to meet the needs of each learner. In this session learn how you can differentiate learning tasks for groups of students using Google Drive and the white magic of Apps Scripts and Add-ons. We will also explore how to provide adaptive instruction, including formative feedback, based on a student’s understanding using Google Forms, YouTube and Gmail. Chromebooks or laptops are recommended. Participants with tablet devices will find it hard to participate in the hands-on sections of this session.

Session Resources:bit.ly/jradifferentiation

Notes

Doctorpus (add on to Google sheets) to distribute differentiated Google docs (same doc to all, different docs to different groups, shared with differentiated groups)

Goobric (Chrome Extension) for Rubric feedback from Doctorpus

Use Search tools to filter by reading level for sources

Using Flubaroo to create self marking tests. After the test is created as a Google form, complete as ‘Answer’ ‘Key’ to get answers. ‘Student Feedback’ gives one comment for the whole quize (use an IF statement to give differentiated feedback).  Help tips will include specific question by question feedback emailed to the student.

Google drawing tips: use option key and drag objects to make a copy. Hover line tool over points on a shape, connect to another shape and the two are now linked. You can move them independently and they still stay connected. Check out this example.

Link to websites from session.

Session Description

In this highly interactive ChromeBook Dojo you will learn the secret art Chrome mastery. As you progress through the belts you will put into combat to defeat inefficiency, frustration and bad browsing habits. Once you’ve found inner ‘Chrome Zen’ your browsing experience will never be the same!

Session Resources: http://goo.gl/rkwMO

Presenter: Tim Lee

Notes:

Origin of Chrome name – all the glitzy bits on a car, unnecessary bits on the Netscape broswer.

Recommend that schools have a browser policy. Chrome can be centrally managed from the Cloud (e.g. set home pages, manage extensions)

Chrome Dojo: A range of resources to getting your Chrome belts.

Great resource for learning about the technical aspects of the web: 20 things I learned

Self paced course on search: Power searching with Google

Use of extensions and tabs.

• Use of Onetab to send out a group of websites that students may be using for a particular task.
• Google dictionary: With this extension, you can:
  1) Double-click any word to view its definition in a small pop-up bubble.
  2) View the complete definition of any word or phrase using the toolbar dictionary.
  3) Store a history of words you’ve looked up, so you can practice them later.
• Texthelp: read and write for Google. Could be useful for students when drafting their reports.
• Turnoffthelights: hides unnecessary content on page (eg YouTube)
• Other tips: Print-> Destination -> Google Cloud print (to easily share with students)
• Extensions and Apps Tim uses:
• Training for use of Google drive – Synergyse
• Workshop links