“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe” – Abraham Lincoln.
In this session you will have a chance to ‘sharpen your axe’ with a range of useful tips and tricks to not only make you more efficient in the use of your device, but also a focus on Web Apps, Chrome Extensions and Google App Add-ons. The session is presented in a gamified format with activities that you could use in your classroom tomorrow.
Session Resources:
1) Do now: Complete the quiz linked below to see how well your machine is set up for GSuite for Education
Install/try at least 1 new to you (share with group?). If you have used any of those add ons/extensions (or others) and you think it’s awesome – add a comment to the BIST Facebook group.
As part of the 2019 YIA Awards one of the guest judges, Erik Hay from Weta Workshop, presented to a room full of educators on the creative process. Erik is the Creative Strategy Director at Weta and has a background in advertising. As someone who places myself on the ‘talentless’ end of the creative spectrum is was reassuring to hear the creativity as a much a process as a talent. And as part of this process, ideation as a starting point is so important. Erik gave some examples of some bad ideas that were turned into movies, and despite have millions of dollars spent in production, they were still bad ideas….
One of the aspects that made his presentation engaging was the design of his slides. It was refreshing not to see the standard title/bullet point/image that students (and myself) are often guilty of. But it probably helps if you work for a company like Weta full of talented artists that you can get to draw your slides!
One of my key takeaways was the traits that Weta looks for in their employees. Erik explained that this came from their development as a company. Which Richard Taylor said yes to all those Lord of the Rings movies, there simply wasn’t enough people in NZ with the right skills. So Weta needed to employ people who could quickly develop those skills and so adopted the above recruitment checklist. Yet again, another example of the importance of traits/dispositions over qualifications.
Lastly, kind of a nice set of ground rules to operate with a bunch of different people (just like a classroom!). Favourite rule: Be a radiator, not a drain!
So made it into the #SYD19 Google Innovator academy hosted at the Sydney Google office. Major benefit is connecting with some awesome educators. Amazing start to this 3 day event. Here are some brief notes, resources and pictures.
After almost 50 Academies there are over 1500+ Google Innovators in over 40 countries.
Difficult paths lead to beautiful destinations
Sam Gibson
Spark – History of Google Innovation Academy by Mark Wagner
…with science and the human heart there is no limit
U2 – Miracle drug
You are an architect of the possible
Google Glass instruction
I do not think the measure of a civilization is how tall its buildings of concrete are but rather how well its people have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.
Twice a term, Aorere College asks it’s students (via Google Forms) what the school needs to:
Keep doing
Stop doing
Start doing
Spark – The culture of Google by Dan
Quantity > Quality
Culture of Google: Curiosity, Agency, Collaboration, Risk-taking
Project Culture Shift
Day 2
Spark: Streetview with Sue
Spark: Building a mindset of innovation (Fear factor) by Lorinda Ferry
“Have a go”
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Books will soon be obsolete in the schools. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye. It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed in ten years.”
Thomas Edison, 1913
Spark – Implementing sustainable innovation by Rich
Upschool – a series of videos that explains teaching and learning to parents.
“What happens with the rockstar leaves”
It’s more than ‘buy in‘, it’s co-creation.
Energiser day – Saturday
Advocacy
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
MMTS is just for the ‘Explore’ part of the learning. They are not Hyperdocs where students are expected to develop and apply their understanding.
Acknowledge source when reusing. ‘Created by xxx, remixed by xxx’, ‘Inspired by xxx, recreated by xxxx’
Present work as not tasks to be completed (i.e. a worksheet) but as a springboard to further learning.
Teacher talk
“You have 8 minutes – learn as much as you can about refugees using this multi media text set. In partners, least amount of battery close your lid”
Feedback from questions posted from students – choose an open question (describe what open vs closed is).
“What is a search term you could use, how could you start finding an answer?” That is our lesson for today. Tomorrow we will do the same. For 5 days you will have the same routine – 8 minutes, post question, and explore the answers.
Collect comments on Padlet with no names as it is non-threatening.
No ear buds as students don’t work together. Used Closed Captioning to read the text and turn volume down.
Next session: “I’m going to let you explore alone”
Next next session: “I’m going to get you to choose if you work alone or in partners”
Questions, wonders and Aha’s
Lisa Highfill
Extension: Student to create Text Set (share the template).
Design tips
Process: brainstorm/curate on document. Highlight the good stuff.
