Tech Talk: Students share their digital learning with parents

Last night the Year 5 and 6 Tech Wizards held a Tech Talk evening where they shared their digital learning with parents and teachers.

The purpose of the evening was for students to demonstrate the benefits of digital technology and how this helps them learn in the classroom by sharing their learnings and skills. More than 30 parents and teachers attended. It was great to see adults asking questions about the different programs and having a go at using them. It was also fantastic to hear the children confidently explaining the features and benefits of their chosen topic.

24 students worked individually, in pairs or in groups of 3. Their topics included Google apps, Movemote, Scratch and the Tech Wizards programme. The evening was run 'speed dating' style with two rotations of 7 topics, each held for 7-8 minutes.

Some students had previously spoken at the Burnside Cluster Learning Community Unconference and confidently presenting these talks. For others it was the first time they had shared 1-to-1 with adults so they had spent the last three weeks writing scripts, preparing examples and practising the delivery of their presentations at Tech Wizard time on Friday mornings. Some were a little nervous at first but the students soon relaxed and enjoyed the experience!

Exercise for mental preparedness

So this post is a shout out to me. Today is my one year anniversary of learning to run.

I say 'learning' because despite enjoying regular walking and swimming, when I started running a year ago I wasn't able to make it far without some unpleasant consequences! For me, learning to run has been a journey of goal setting, of not making excuses, of persevering, and of ignoring others' remarks. To reference the Nike slogan, running has been about "just doing it"... for myself.

I want to share this because although I can honestly say I don't particularly enjoy the physical act of running, I do appreciate the mental preparedness and emotional stability daily exercise gives me.

In terms of my role as an Associate Principal, running provides me with time to plan, to prioritise tasks, to problem-solve or to think through potentially difficult conversations. And sometimes running just gives me time out, time to think about nothing at all, to clear my head of all the leadership challenges I have recently dealt with. But most of all, running helps me view life through a positive lens, to see the strengths in others, to recognise the potential in new ideas and to find the silver linings. Sure, I still have my tough days, even my tough weeks ... but now I have a strategy to help me work through whatever unexpected situations come my way.

So now I start each morning with either a 40 minute run or a walk (I alternate each day). This means getting out of bed early and braving the sometimes chilly, sometimes humid weather but it is worth it.
For anyone interested, I recommend the free iPhone app Couch to 5km. This app takes a beginner (getting off the couch!) to 5 kms (30 minutes) of running over 8 weeks. It starts with intervals of 60 seconds jogging / 90 seconds walking three times per week which is very achievable.

Why not give it a try?

Resource: Digi-Parenting Website

Vodafone have recently launched a Digi-Parenting website with the support of The Parenting Place and Netsafe. It has articles, resources and links to other websites that parents may find helpful.

This resource could be useful to share when discussing e-Learning and digital citizenship with your school community.

https://digi-parenting.co.nz

Student Tech Wizards present at the Burnside Cluster 'Unconference'

Yesterday I took 14 Year 5 and 6 students from Fendalton Open-air School to the Burnside Cluster Learning Community Unconference to speak to educators about "How technology helps me learn." This was a wonderful experience for the children as they had the opportunity to prepare and present a 5 minute talk about a digital technology they regularly use in their classroom and how this helps them be a motivated and successful learner.

The students spoke at two 45-minute sessions which were run speed-dating style. Each small group of educators rotated around the different presenters to hear a short talk about eight different digital technologies. These included Google Classroom for online homework, Google Docs for writing and commenting, Google Drawings for creating posters, flowcharts and visual messages, Google Research tool for gathering data and images from the Internet, Google Slides for creating and presenting slideshows, Movenote for creating short videos, Scratch for coding and details about the Tech Wizards programme.

The opportunity to present at the Unconference was offered the 30+ students in the Tech Wizards group who meet before school on Fridays. Tech Wizards is an optional programme for students who want to learn about new technologies, share their learning with others and give service within the school. Not only did the Unconference presenters present on the first day of their school holidays but each student worked in their own time to write a script, identify key pieces of work that demonstrated their topic, refine their presentation with either with myself or our e-Learning leader, Carmen Dodd then practice their talk in front of the wider Tech Wizards group. 

My purpose for taking the students to the Unconference was two-fold. Firstly it provided an authentic audience for them to share the knowledge and skills they have gained over the last two years. It also gave them the opportunity to further develop their public speaking skills including talking to adults and adapting a planned script to suit their audience. The students demonstrated commitment to this responsibility by arriving well before the session, dressing very smartly (boys even wearing ties!) and nervously asking questions like "Will I need to stop reading my script to answer questions?", "Will it be noisy and will I need to speak loudly?"and "What should I do if I don't get through all my talk?" While the delivery of their first presentations were serious they soon relaxed into a comfortable style, confidently explaining their topic and offering teachers the opportunity to give things a go. 

And this was my second reason for bringing the students to present at the Unconference. I wanted educators who may be new or unexperienced in digital technologies to have the opportunity to find out about them in a non-threatening environment. By learning from the students themselves, educators could ask questions, have a go and seek clarification about what students find useful without the use of too much techie lingo or the assumption that they will know things that perhaps they may not.  

I was extremely proud of the Fendalton School students and feedback received about the sessions was positive. I hope these young people have inspired teachers within the Burnside Cluster of schools to find out more, try something new and look for opportunities in their own classrooms where technology may enhance the teaching and learning experience.

Getting connected: From Twitter to Google+ then a 10 day challenge

From Twitter...
Over the past two years I have been challenging myself to become a more connected educator. Why? Because becoming more actively involved in online communities has provided me the opportunity to interact with teachers from across the country who have a similar passion for teaching, learning and ICTs. These educators are people I would otherwise not have met and learnt from.

Initially, I was cautious about the public nature of social media. I was hesitant about sharing myself with the world and worried about digital safety. While I am still conscious of the digital footprint I am leaving, I have found the benefits of being connected have outweighed my concerns.

My online journey started when I joined Twitter. With suggestions from my school principal and other teaching friends, I began to follow educators who shared fantastic resources, helpful teaching strategies and inspiring classroom successes. My experience with Twitter was, the more I persevered by following and sharing with others the more others followed and shared with me. I began to receive answers to questions and links to new resources to use with my students. This saved me a huge amount of time and reinventing of the wheel. Next I joined in Twitter chats about education-related topics, following hashtags such as #nzleaderschat, #chchprincipals, #edchatnz, #edtech, #mathschatnz and engchatnz. I have enjoyed these professional conversations and have been introduced to new ideas and viewpoints about educational theory and practice. Twitter has even helped me arrange for staff at my school to visit other teachers.

... to Google+
My next digital step was to join Google+. This has proved to be another powerful online medium and has, for me, fulfilled a slightly different need. Google+ has a fantastic feature called Communities where you can invite others with a commonality or similar interest to interact. These communities can either be public or private. Staff working within our local cluster of ECEs and school have been invited to join and contribute to a private community. We now have 70+ members and the forum is becoming an increasingly utilised way of sharing meeting minutes and upcoming professional development opportunities as well as organising events, promoting useful resources and teaching strategies, sending requests for help and much more.

A 10 day challenge
To build an awareness of Google+ and grow our Burnside Learning Cluster online community, I recently worked with Tamara Bell from Cobham Intermediate to design a 10 day Google+ challenge. This series of bite-sized activities was planned to introduce others to the features of Google+ in just 10 minutes per day. Initially it was shared with our newly formed cluster DP/AP/Senior Leaders network. Several teachers from locals schools took up the challenge and the response was positive. Some are now on-sharing it with their staff to help up-skill others and further grow connections between ECEs and schools.

If you are interested in using the 10 day Google+ challenge to up-skill yourself or your staff, follow THIS LINK. Enjoy!

Green Screen Images: Learning Alongside Year 6 Students

Last week I was working in the Year 6 classes at school. The leader of our senior syndicate asked me to help her students create a slideshow showing their recently made Wearable Arts costumes to celebrate and share the product of their inquiry. She had an end goal in mind but wasn’t sure how to achieve it. How could the students place a photo of themselves in costume against an alternative background? She set me the challenge of finding out.

During the morning I worked with a small group of interested students. Together we suggested ideas, Googled, used Help menus and problem-solved to discover, trial and record the solution. This focused but largely undirected learning stimulated amazing conversation about the features, techniques and tools within different applications.

By the afternoon the students and I were teaching their Year 6 classmates how to create Microsoft Powerpoint slides showing themselves in costume in front of a relevant (or funny!) background. Below are some examples of what the students independently created.

While I could have asked around the staff to see if anyone could teach me this new skill, learning alongside the students and discovering the solution for ourselves was incredibly powerful and highly motivating. The process of suggesting solutions, trial and error, helping and supporting each other made the discovering just as exciting and meaningful as creating the end products. Teaching their peers then gave the students the opportunity to consolidate their new learning.

At the end of the day the children and I were buzzing. We couldn’t wait to share our photos and celebrate our success. It was just another example of why I love being a teacher. To live in a time when we have access to amazing technology is such a privilege so I believe it is important we utilise these tools to their full potential while remaining mindful of how we use it and why. 

Thank you for setting me this challenge Judy. I look forward to the next one!

Create. Learn. Share. Enjoy.

Instructions for how to add a background to a green screen photo:

1. Take a photo of a person or object against a plain background (e.g a sheet. Green is preferable but not essential).

2. Take a photo of a landscape or save a Creative Commons image from the Internet.

3. Open Microsoft Powerpoint (2010 or later).

4. Select a slide style e.g. White.

5. Delete any text boxes or other formatting guides.

6. Insert>Photo>select source for the green screen photo of the person or object.

7. Format Picture>Adjust>Remove background. The background to be deleted will turn purple. Adjust this using the sizing handles. 

For more detailed information about selecting the background for removal type “Remove a picture background” in the Help menu.

8. Click outside the picture to remove the background.

9. Insert>Photo>select source for your landscape image.

10. Arrange>Send to back

11. Resize the background to fit the slide if needed. Place the foreground image where desired.

John Hattie: His 10 myths about student achievement

I've just read a brief but interesting article "John Hattie: His 10 myths about student achievement." It is the summary of a BBC radio interview he gave. Number 10 really caught my attention as 'just do your best' is a phrase I often use to encourage my own kids and students at school to give new things a try.

"10. Student Expectation - John Hattie claims that telling a child "do your best" is the worst thing a teacher or parent can do. A successful teacher establishes a student's expectations of their own abilities but then dispels those expectations by telling them they can do better. What a student achieved yesterday should never be okay for tomorrow."

So encouraging a child to "just do your best" is not challenging them to achieve their full potential but to merely demonstrate what they can already do, thus not moving their achievement forward. Next time a situation such as this presents itself, my goal is to be specific and establish with the student (or my child!) what success will look like and the steps they might take to achieve this.

Here is the link to the article: http://www.irisconnect.co.uk/john-hattie-10-myths-about-student-achievement/