Popplet Criteria

One of the principles of quality learning we push with our students is knowing what success looks like. We do this in quite a few ways but having a success criteria is pretty up there.

This week our classes are publishing their short stories on Comiclife, one of the student's favourite ways to publish and share their work. This criteria below was created using Popplet. I love this tool for the following reasons.

1. You can create visually stunning posters in less time than it takes to shake a stick.

2. You can import images, links and video as well as text.

3. It is interactive but also adaptable to be static - you can export or take a screenshot and print this into a great poster for the wall.

This embeded version lets the user move it around, zoom in and out and, if there are videos they can be played within the window, too.

So far this term we have created two different posters of criteria that students can refer back to; this one and one for creating a great instructional video on Doodle Cast Pro (a great video making app). My hope is that we will create a wall of criteria that will help guide the student to success for a whole range of publishing / sharing tools they can choose.

Teaching Kids to be Brave and Kind

I thought I'd pass on this article on the Momastry blog. It's written by Glennon Doyle Melton and really resonated with me this week. From the look of the 1400 odd comments underneath it has for others, too.

The idea that an educator's role is to simply raise achievement standards would rankle even the numbest teacher. There are so many things we do in our classes that can make or break children's futures - it makes me baulk at the weight of that responsibility and to be honest, there have been times in my shortish career where I would admit that I've missed the wood for the trees.

This recount of a parent and their description of the efforts they take to look out for the lonely children in their class is inspirational and incredible challenging! But the line that stands out for me the most is right at the end.

Isn't that what it's all about. Do we teach children how to read and write? Yes. But we should also shape and inspire them to be resilient, to go outside their comfort zones and to move from being ego centric to thinking of others.

So, what does this mean for me? It means that when I have photocopying to quickly grab before the bell goes and a student comes to talk with me and make a connection before the start of the day... I will stop and listen and gift her some of my time. It sounds easy but with the pressures of teaching I can assure you that if my priorities are not right, it's not.

There are lots of little things we can do to make every student feel accepted, safe, cared for and valuable. Lots of small things. And small things, I'm finding, add up to be big things.

Have we missed the point of teaching sometimes? Is it all about technology, innovative practice and passion? No. I wonder if it's about helping kids be brave and kind. I also think that we need to model that to them, too. 

Aurasma - an Interactive, Digital Display

We have a third year college teacher, @mattmurraynz, working with us this year and he is proving to be a handy innovator in his own right.  One of his college assignments this term was to create an interactive display in the classroom.  He told me his class were thinking, 'What? How do you do that?'

With a little bit of chatter and after seeing a great ipad app called aurasma lite he came up with an idea for using augmented reality and the student's learning about taonga - special treasures.

The student's held their taonga and spoke about it's importance to them, then Matt made this into a video. The video is uploaded to aurasma and a screen shot of the video was printed out and hung on the wall.

Matt then went through the steps on the app to take an image of the photo and linked it to the uploaded video. And below is the result. When you hold the aurasma app view finder up to the image it shows the video of the student speaking inside the image of the photo.

How cool would our classrooms, office foyers, shopping mall walls, and street signs be with this kind of interaction?

Showme - Connecting any time, anywhere.

My teacher inquiry this year is to provide the parents of my class as many opportunities to be a part of the learning with my students. I suppose I 'm trying to widen our learning community beyond being just my students and I'm assuming that this will help them achieve - so far it definitely has!

One of the things I've been doing is to give the students access to teaching from home - not from a worksheet but through interactive games and videos.

This isn't anything radical but, like any good elearning practice, the effectiveness is enhanced when teaching pedagogies and media are mashed into a workable system. One that is student centred and personalised.

An example of this is our basic facts blog. Here the students are working through a series of steps on a basic facts ladder (designed by advisersplus in the Hawkes Bay) using some links to interactive games - and some videos created on a great ipad app called showme.

Showme has been a fantastic way to record some teaching steps for a particular skill that the student can access at any time. Some parents have told me that THEY"VE found them helpful when they've tried to help their child master a particular skill.

Here's a video explaining more about how it came about and the impact it's having in classrooms across the world.

There are lots of uses for this great little app. I've used to remind students on our classblog about the scientific method - really helpful when they're working in groups and unsure about a step in their experiment, and last year my students became quite handy in making their own showmes to explain and demonstrate their learning about all kinds of things we were doing in class.

Here's a showme that I made to explain how to find fractions of a whole number. The small group I was working with was able to show their parents at home and consolidate their learning even more.

How are you providing opportunities for your students and parents to continue the learning?

A Connected World that's already here.

I had another glimpse into the power of Twitter tonight - as if I needed another one. I've recently started following people outside of the 'educational' realm. @lancearmstrong, @coryjane1080 and @trevormallard are just a few and they can be pretty entertaining. It opens a world that you wouldn't otherwise have any connection with.

So tonight I saw a tweet from @trevormallard about the Labour Party leader, Phil Goff holding #goffchat at 6.30pm. He was keen to answer questions that people tweeted. So, being the risk taker that I am, I offered a question / suggestion that I've been wondering for a while. And you can see the result below (overlook the spelling error 'of', please).

Was it a life changing interchange? No. Would that little interaction have happened at the last election? No, again. But the world is changing! It's changing into one where a guy can ask a simple question to a political leader in a blink of an eye, just after he gets home after a run and before he eats his tea.

Is today's world a clutter of information and a minefield of privacy issues? Yes. But it's a connected world I'm also really enjoying. And one we should be preparing our students for - cause they're already there.

Twitter's Birthday!

I've been sharing the magic of Twitter ALOT lately. (I'm sure I heard someone sigh this week but I don't care...) It is, hands down, the MOST powerful PD you can ever be involved in. Most educators who blog have tapped into it's potential to connect / share and upskill.

I showed our Lead Teachers this video today which has come out on Twitters 5th birthday! It's hard to imagine life without it, now. Yes...I'm not ashamed to say that I'm professionally addicted.

Here are two small examples how teachers are using it in our cluster.

1. A class is involved in a space inquiry and they are following the astronaut in the above movie! He's posting photos and updates from a space station. They're apparently SO engaged in their inquiry and his posts inspire so many further questions for them to explore.

2. The Southland region now has 14 educators who are using twitter for connecting with each other, both inside the region and out. Here are a few local twitter names to watch for;

- Timl27 - a local Principal - and new blogger.

- Craiginteract - the IWB facilitator for the Invercargill Region

- Cossie29 - AP and teacher who is embarking on some further study soon. Prolific tweeter!

COME ON! Join the revolution.=)

Indexed - communication in the new world.

This blog, thisisindexed.com,  uses graphs to tell some pretty cool stories.  The bio goes -
This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.

The posts look like this...

It's a pity some of the posts are a bit...risky... or I'd show the kids in my class.  It does make me think about the way new media is changing the way we communicate with each - even the fact that these new ways can earn us a living.

I teach writing in set genres (and I know that is a dirty word in schools now, yet we still assess them, therefore - we teach them) like procedural, recounts and persuasive writing. 

I'd love to see us teaching methods of writing - communicating - like this... just..how.  mmmm

School websites - Brochure or Community Builder?

We've had an interesting week with weather in Invercargill, to say the least.  A friend talked with a 70 year old local who said she hadn't seen snow like this in her life time.  So, regardless of what you view as the cause - global warming or freakish weather pattern - nature has a way of interrupting your daily routines.

When we woke up on Monday morning the media were reporting several schools were closed because of concerns about roofs collapsing.  When I arrived to school at 7.45 there were three staff and the principal fielding phone call after phone call.  The question was obvious, - "Are you open?"  It became quite comical at one stage.  They would say they answered the question over forty times - before I arrived.

So... I suggested we put something on the website, which I did.  Then we sat back, continued to field phone calls and watch the web stats (a great new addition to the blogger armory).  The thing that staggered me, when you look at the comparison of the stats, was how few people thought to check the website.  Here was my tweet on it the next day.  Ignore the first (last in tweetville) post about Ping.  I just thought that was funny.

There are three questions this raises for me.

 - Are the parents of our community not as digitally tuned as we like to think?  Most of our community uses the internet for banking, shopping, entertainment and, yes, even learning.  But do we use it for instant information?  I thought we did.  Why not with our school?

 - Do the parents visit the website?  Is it gathering some readership since we relaunched it?  The screenshot below shows that it's getting, on average, about 30 to 40 hits a day.  I'd say that, yes, some momentum IS gathering speed and word is getting out there - we've had some good feedback.

 - Should schools take some of the hit for their websites poor community support?  I have seen school site after site set up as a static, online brochure.  They are great for prospective parents and teachers looking to see whether they'll apply for that position.  But, as a community service and a place for communication they are quite redundant.

So, I think the scepticism of what a school website will provide is quite valid.  Why should a community take the time to visit a school site for up to date information when I can just call the school - or the Principal, which happens more than you would know.  What are the reasons for websites being so neglected and underused for the people they should serve?

1.  Time  - Anyone involved in education recognises the squeeze for time that is happening in our schools; a crowded curriculum, increased parent expectations and now a National Standards regime that will have us double up on assessment and reporting.  A teacher I really respect once said that we should always make time for the things that we value.  He was talking about using efolios in the class room and how we should give the students time for reflection and making comments.  I'd suggest that, if we really value creating and caring for a genuine learning community then some allocation of time for up-keeping a website would be critical.  Communication, celebration and sharing should be the aim of every school website.

2.  Expertise - There is a growing group of teachers in our schools who are quietly developing some amazing skills in working with blogs and websites.  It isn't really that hard - kids are doing it, after all!  Does your school have someone who create, manage and drive the fresh content on your site?  If not, perhaps this should be a consideration when recruiting new staff.  

3.  Cost - Lots of the static websites that I see are created and managed by a third party source that costs the school a setup and monthly fee.  This can easily be eliminated with the free services we can access now.  Our school's website uses Wix as it's launching platform (it has a kid friendly interface and interactive element) that connects with blogger and some google sites - all of these are free!  The only cost is the time that's given to work on them... and there's not as much release as you would think.

 

4.  Desire - How much vision and drive does your school have for a fresh, dynamic online presence?  I think that a website has a lot of potential to help build a community of learners - which is what many of our schools aspire to.  Communication is a big part of that but it takes committement and perseverance.    Every school just needs one person with the motivation, interest and drive to keep taking those photos, uploading video and updating newsletters and notices.  

I think that schools have some work to do to build up the trust of their communities.  People will become followers and users of a school website when they know that it will be useful, up to date and relevant. 

It's a big challenge!

NB Our school's next steps are

 - update our BOT information (exciting, I know)

 - upload our student voice page - a class project to see the school through student's eyes

 - continue to build the written content of our students.  I want to the website to be student driven and managed as much as possible.  We have a team of gifted students who are keen to be our journalists and photographers.  I think we should be taking advantage of this authentic audience!  But that's another post.

Skype in Classrooms

I became a fan of Skyping when my parents moved to Russia for work. It's amazing how, at the end of a skype call with them you really do feel as if they have just popped around for a visit. It's almost as if you don't miss them quite as much because, 'We see them all the time.' We often have the kids show them a toy they just bought, do a dance or piano recital and one time Dad took us for a tour of their apartment with an extra long laptop cord.

This term our class had some ebuddies set up with a teacher in Alabama, USA. We set up a combined wiki to pose some questions and used the skype call as a motivation to teach the students questioning and conversational skills - we even had co-constructed a success matrix to help us write some open questions (a skill that we have much road to travel on!)

The Skype calls were a huge success, in terms of a rich learning experience. We learnt a lot about questioning, how to have a conversation and were even opened up to the obvious cultural diversity that exists, even between two western countries; the students in Alabama were quite taken with the fact that a lot of our children wear bare-feet all day, quite unheard of for them.

Next term we are looking to use Skype for some research into our 'biotechnology' inquirys - as well as renewing our connection with Alabama! I'm setting up a media room in the corner of the class that has our school logo behind the camera and a sliding door to block out some noise. It's all very exciting and helps us to achieve a goal for this year - to branch out of our four walls and connect with the outside world, even if that means digitally as well as physically.

Here's a fantastic set of links to skype in the classroom related resources from Teachingdegree.org

This video is an excellent introduction to the world of Skype. Thanks to sayitvisually for the upload and Richard Byrne for the link (Freetech4teachers).



(Photo above used under Creative Commons, by Shareski, from Flickr.com)

Powerpoint no nos.

Our class often uses a powerpoint presentation during 'QNews', our research and oral language activity. We use a matrix that guides the students to using them effectively and it includes things like having no more than five words per slide.

I think that teaching students to use visuals when they communicate something is so critical in getting a message across. My belief made for some interesting debate with other teachers last year when I raised the idea of having ppts as part of our senior speech competition - you can imagine the points for and against.

This video has some classic ppt mistakes and it always amazes me how many adults fail to stick to some basic rules.

Best PPT how to video ever!

This is a link to something everyone who uses ppt for presentations should watch. It's from Alvin Trusty, recorded at the 'etechohio2009' education conference and has some fantastic practical tips - beyond the standard, 'Don't read out all the words on the screen.'

How to Create a Great PowerPoint - Take 2.0 from Alvin Trusty on Vimeo.

(Another credit to my favourite personal learning network - Twitter. This is a retweet from AngelaMaiers)