#1. School visits for the BeLT
So - Week 4, Thursday and Friday. The BeLT (Blended e-learning Lead Team), of which I am a part of, went on two school visits - Thursday to Rangitiki College in Marton, and Friday to Otaki College in Otaki. The purpose of our visits was to see how they were integrated DIT, specifically Chromebooks. into their teaching and learning. We, as a school, are looking at getting Chromebooks, and the BeLT members each have one that we are 'trialling' at the moment.
Rangitiki College - this is a rather small school, even smaller than ours (and I thought ours was small). They are using Chromebooks in their lessons, and have a few COWS worth that teachers can 'book' out. These are used a LOT more than the actual computer labs. Students can also bring their own devices, and the school has lined up a deal for the students to be able to purchase Chromebooks. Some students, however, had their own device that was not a Chromebook, and that worked okay as well. Students are just used to using Google Drive for their work - in fact, the students we saw were using Google Drive for all of their subjects, and it was almost like second nature. The Health class, a junior class, that we saw was using Google Presentation to document their learning over the term, and a senior English class was using Google Docs to record notes of their close viewing of a scene from the film they were studying - which they were all watching over YouTube. Students in this class were then able to share notes on their scene with others in the class. Rangitiki, however, are having a few network issues - connectivity issues.
Otaki College - there are several classes of Year 7s and 8s who are using Chromebooks as a part of their class - digital classes, and I believe a Year 9. However, next year all Year 7s, 8s, 9s, and 10s will be using Chromebooks. This school has funding, which has enabled parents to put a 'down payment' on for purchasing their child a Chromebook, which they then 'rent to own' paying a certain (small) amount each week. The school has a Kawa of Care, and students are not allowed to take the Chromebooks home until the parents have come into the school and had a 'lesson', which also goes over the Kawa of Care. The students who showed us around showed us through how they have used Chromebooks as part of their learning, including how they go to their class 'Google Site' at the beginning of each day - the teacher has everything planned out, and the students look on the site to find out what they are doing for the day, and when they have certain individual activities on. This was FAB! Teacher planning, student engagement - students were even able to 'log in' from home, and some even completed the work from home so that they didn't feel like they were being left out. It was so great to see how DIT were just a part of their every day school day.
Both schools use Teacher Dashboard - something I have seen in action a couple of times. I believe this is quite a valuable tool, and definitely worth investigating.
#2. Technical issues continue
On another, but related note, my Chromebook is still NOT working at school. For some reason it is not letting me connect or log into the school wireless, but works perfectly fine at home. I tried 'powerwashing' it - making it start from scratch - to no avail. We are also still not having any luck with our school 'gmail' accounts - we cannot use it with anything Google, like Blogger, Google Plus, logging in to Google Docs (or anything else) on things like a IPad - the Gmail app for IPads doesn't even recognise our school email. We do have access to our school Google Drive, when accessed through our school email. However, having two Gmails - a school and a personal one - to do different things, but all for school, is becoming incredibly frustrating. Surely it should just be something quick and easy, but we are having a lot of trouble getting this sorted! This also means that we cannot log into our Chromebooks with our school account - definitely something we need to get sorted before we even think about the students getting them.
Sarah and I did, however, get into Google Classroom last week, and the BeLT team did FINALLY find out that we already have a GAFE account - it only took us stumbling onto this information through trying things, not from our help people.
#3. Update on my MLE
As I mentioned in a previous post, my DP who went away to conference with me and I had come up with a plan on how we might be able to turn my classroom (which used to be the old common room) into a MLE. Well, this got underway on Monday of Week 5 (the week just gone by). I only remembered part way through that I wanted to document the process, and had forgotten to take any pics. However, the week before I had taken some pics of my Year 11s completely engaged in their study (taken with their permission), so here are those, plus some of the room part way through its half-way transformation.As you might be able to see, there is space at the back here with a big circle table on its side - this is the old kitchen. There is also a room behind that door - a room we cannot get into at the moment (it is bolted from the wrong side, and filled with lots of old desks and things. The pictures are taken from the front of the room, where the teacher desk is, and the whiteboard and projector + screen. The desks are set up in groups, as that is usually how I try to work.
And here are some pictures of how we have transformed the room, so far. It is mid-way through - some more changes are to come.
The transformation in progress:
The mid-way product (still a WIP):
#4. Best Practice Workshop
On Thursday of Week 5, one of my staff and I went to the English Best Practice Workshop. It focused on the Level 2 Writing Portfolio and the Level 2 and 3 Create a Visual Text standards.
It clarified a few things around the writing - particularly around 'developing and sustaining' of ideas, around 'errors', and around the types of writing tasks that do not seem to work so well.
The Create a Visual Text standard information helped a bit more than the writing. It helped clear up some questions I had around the use of images from Google. Also, it highlighted that my definition of 'manipulation' of images is not the same as what is presented, particularly in the Level 3 exemplars. The addition of symbols, the repetition of them, and making them change is important. Webpages are not encouraged at either level, as they seem to focus more on the verbal than the visual.
#5. Teacher Only Day
The BeLT worked hard to put together a Teacher Only Day for our school. On Friday, just gone, we organised workshops that covered a range of things, in directions for where we want to go. This included: Blogging for beginners, Starting a Twitter Account, Google Drive for Beginners, Google Docs Intermediate, Using Doctopus, Using Goobric, Different ideas for submitting assessments, Using Pinterest, Using Google Forms, QR codes - and how to create them, the Google Basics courses and exams, Google Apps, and using and organising your Gmail and Google Calendar. Workshops ran for an hour, and teachers went to 4 workshops. Each member of the BeLT ran a workshop in each session, with the help of the Principal's Assistant. It took a lot of organising, and a lot of work went into it. At then end of the day, teachers had one hour to put together a Google Presentation on what they had learned in each of their 4 sessions.
There were, like there always are, some who were not so 'enthusiastic' about the day, and went through the sessions only because they had to, not because they wanted to. However, most people were very thankful, and those quiet 'thank yous' made all the difference.
The magnificent Sarah, who makes cupcakes 'on the side', made cupcakes for her workshop on QR codes - with an edible QR code on top!! Participants had to scan the QR code as part of the workshop - genius!
My role:
I helped put together the initial ideas for the workshops and organise the sheets for teachers to sign up on. Ant, Guy and I spent two hours trying to sort out individual teacher timetables for the day, before we decided that a Google Form would be better, and put 5 options for each session.
I also ran the following workshops: Google Forms, Google Docs Intermediate, Doctopus, and Goobric. They all went well, and my participants seemed to take a lot away.
I created a short video that we showed at the beginning of the day, which stepped teachers through how to create a Google Presentation - this was my first ever video, which is now on YouTube!! I used QuickTime player on my laptop, and recorded what I was doing while narrating over the top. I felt like a dork, but it seemed to go down well.
#6. Reflection
After a busy few weeks, I still don't feel like I have time to breathe. I am yet to finish marking my exams, although I am ALMOST there! We have reports due at the end of the coming week. I have a Year 13 Internal (the Close Viewing write up) coming in by 11:59pm tomorrow night (the advantages of Google Docs) - although I have only had two Docs shared with me thus far - starting to get a bit worried. I was supposed to have Level 1 and 2 Personal Reading Responses in for their first checkpoint on Friday (mostly via Google Docs) - this is an optional additional, extra credit assessment that most of my students opted in for. However, I have only had 3 in, in total :-(. Gotta check that out tomorrow, and might need to make some phone calls to parents. I have an HOD meeting tomorrow afternoon, Department (catch up) meeting Tuesday afternoon, students coming to study group on Wednesday afternoon - and then we are nearing the end of the week already! Far out!
I am also looking into learning how to code! I really want to investigate ways that I can then bring in coding - learning to, creating games and/or apps - into my English programme. There may not be a way, but I think it would so cool if students were able to learn those things. Maybe an English programme is not the right place - but I'm gonna figure it out! :-) Maybe I just need to re-train as an DIT teacher?... Maybe I'm in the wrong industry (probably not though)?... Food for thought.
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