e-Learning at The Gardens

Most of the students in the two year 7/8 rooms have been going 2 years in e-Learning classrooms, so the teachers have found the beginning of the year with students and devices hardly any problem at all. The students are all very proficient at using their iPads and move freely around the classrooms using all sorts of digital devices and pen and paper.

Christine makes extensive use of Edmodo where she shares almost all of the students 'Learning assignments'. Students can choose what programmes they want to use to show off their learning and share back to Edmodo. Children use the chat  and messaging features purposely to discuss learning.






Some of the apps the students like to use are

They also use Google Sites for blogging and occasionally use Google Docs mostly on the computers rather than the iPad.

Christine still does handwriting with all of the students for 2 reasons

1. Parents are concerned that students won't be able to write when they get to Secondary school
2. Some of the students writing does need to improve legibility

She makes a handwriting PDF, using amazing handwriting worksheet maker. Students access it through Edmodo and practise their handwriting in their handwriting books.

Christine feels that she does a lot more marking in an e-Learning classroom, as students tend to finish work more quickly because they have typed it up once, had it edited and then they finish with the final product. But to balance that, Anna feels that she is so much freer in the class to work with individuals, pairs or groups as the students are so much more independent and self managing.

Choices and Options

Today I was at Holy Cross School in Papatoetoe. They have  2 e-Learning classrooms.
Diane has a year 5/6 classroom with 8 standalone Windows computers and she can book 15 iPads. Sarah has a Year 7/8 class with 12 standalones and 8 iPads. We spent a day in the holidays talking about what e-Learning could look like in their classrooms.
As with everything at the beginning of a new school year there are still a few problems that need to fixed.

• wireless issues in one class
• iPad apps that were recommended still need to be downloaded

Diane was going to teach her whole class how to make an Inspiration mindmap; they had to find dictionary meanings to some words and then explain how that related to the topic they had been talking about. First thing we discovered was that Inspiration was not on all of the iPads. So I suggested taking a small group and using my 2 extra iPads. I demonstrated how I teach students Inspiration which takes less than 5 minutes. Soon the students were all buzzing away and I moved amongst them showing one student how to change shape and colour and suggested they group their ideas. This travelled like osmosis, and soon all of the students were expertly moving between 2 apps, finding meanings and then adding how that meaning related to their topic. They then went on to teach other students in the class how to do it. Once I saw that those students were independently working away, I noticed that other children were on computers typing up information. I suggested to them that they might try SmartArt on Word or PowerPoint...once again in less than 5 minutes those students were independently creating Mindmaps. After a few minutes I showed one student how you could change colours, look or diagram, and before you knew it each child had a different look to their diagrams.
This lead to a discussion on different options for mindmapping

• Inspiration on iPad
• Word or PowerPoint using SmartArt on computer
• large piece of paper with vivid feltips using colour to organise ideas
• coloured post it notes on the window or on a large piece of paper
• window writing pens

So rather than having all the students doing the same thing, give them the choices of how they might like to record their learning.

The students had been working on Narratives and the teacher wanted them to make a short Puppet Pals movie that showed a problem, solution and consequence, all based on their R.E (Religious Education) topic. The students already knew PuppetPals quite well and of course wanted to get straight into it. They were encouraged to storyboard their ideas onto paper and then they proceeded to make their movies.






One boy who is a reluctant writer quickly completed his storyboard, explained it to me and then created his PuppetPal movie (with a friend). About 5 minutes later they came over to show me very proudly. I said how well they had worked and asked them, after watching it a couple of times, was there anything else they could do to it...he replied 'Improve it!' So off they went together and they found themselves a quiet space and worked on it again. Diane said this boy would normally never say that and would pass the work in finished.

Another boy who stood out when using SmartArt for the mindmapping (his mindmap was very creative and showed off the extent of his learning) didn't want to make puppets from photos of other students, he decided he wanted to draw his main character with coloured pencils on paper, photograph it and remove the background. This whole morning session was the most engaged she had ever seen him. He was making his choices using what tools he had available to him.



Sarah's year 7/8 were doing a variety of activities. Some were working on magazine covers for their fortnightly magazine, others were making PowerPoint presentations about what they had learned in Health.
I moved over to one group who were doing the usual PowerPoint one picture and text box to a slide. I suggested they try out using Inspiration Maps as part of their presentation, again in just a few minutes I showed them how to use it. They made all of their slides using Inspiration. The students aren't setup with emails yet so they couldn't email the maps to the computer and insert into their PowerPoint, so in less than 2 minutes I showed them the basics of Book Creator, they made their book in just a few minutes, shared it to iBooks and then they were able to show it as a book at presentation time.

Another group of girls were working on the IWB in Word. They had put their Weemee picture in the middle of the page and were making textboxes all around the image. I showed them how they could put that information into SmartArt and they came up with this.









What I particularly liked about Sarah's room was how there was no 'front of the room' and no teaching station. Sarah moved around the room and sat down in lots of different areas to work with the students.
Some of the pointers I gave her were

• self managing tip...tell students they have X amount of time to do______. They have to work out their time management and manage it themselves. (Sarah did this with the students and it was interesting to see how conscientious they became once they knew they had only a limited time and that they were not going to get any reminders.)
• try not to be so explicit in what you want them to 'produce', let them know what tools are available and let them choose. Set up a rubric with expectations.
• add Inspiration Maps, Smart Art in Word/PowerPoint and Book Creator to your Student Digital Toolkit. Sarah is going to create a Visual Digital Toolkit that will remind students what tools they have available to them for their learning.

Sarah's final comments for the day was that it was cool to see all the kids engaged and doing different things. 

She came up with this statement that she is going to use with her students
' What could you use? rather than 'This is what you have to use!'

Junior Digital Toolkit for Writing

There are so many digital tools available to students.
How can you manage them?
Which is the best tool?
How can we share them out?
How can we remember to use them?

I have talked a lot about the necessity of students having their own 'Digital Toolkit'.

• They need to know what is available 
• They need to know 'how' they can use this toolkit

They need to be able to make choices for their own learning! This is all part of building up self management and collaboration skills.
The diagram below shows an example of an overall 'Junior Digital Toolkit'.
There are 3 main digital tools

• Laptop
• iPad/iPod Touch
• Easi Speak

Now the students need to know how they are going to use these. With the laptop I have itemised the different uses and what software application they will use with it

Writing stories - Kidspiration or Pages

Playing Games -Wiki

Make Movies - iMovie

And then I have done the same with the iPad/iPod Touch

Writing stories - Notes or Pages

Drawing - Create a draw

Making Music - Garageband

As the students progress and become more proficient, I would add more software and apps tools until they have a wide selection and choice about what they could use.

Now let's put this into practice. Below is the Writers Digital Toolkit at the beginning of the year

Students are clearly able to see what their choices are for when Drafting and Publishing.
As the year moves on,  more apps, software and online tools can be added.

There needs to be a monitoring system put in place to see what students are using. For very young children I might have a Sticker chart.

For older, more independent students I would have individual Check lists that are either kept in a Clearfile folder or as a Google Doc.

Putting management techniques such as this in place teaches students to be independent, collaborative and self managing. Students need to know what is available for them to use and that they have a choice in the way they want to learn.

Management of Apps

Students and teachers can waste a lot of time looking for Apps. They need to be categorised and organised into folders.

Set up 'curriculum' pages.

Maths

These could be set up into strand, stages and/or Number Knowledge and Number Strategies.

Students should be directed to the folders that are related to the teaching and learning intention of that day.

Writing
Literacy needs to split up into at least Reading and Writing. Depending on how many apps you have you  may split it even further to have a Spelling and Grammar page. In this example I like to have a separate folder that offers many different ways to publish.

Reading
In this example the books have been divided up into Junior and Senior Books. You may want to consider reading ages as folder names.
I have separated the 'interactive' books such as Mushroom Age or The Mystery of the Crystal Porter as they have less reading and more interactive tasks in them.

Music

I have divided up the music apps into the different categories of

• Wind
• Percussion
• Strings
• Singing
• Piano

Art

There are so many wonderful art apps available. I have separated the drawing ones from the apps that do special effects.







The other curriculum apps like Social Sciences and Science can be divided up between pages as well.

Transformations in the 21st Century Digital Environment

This is a slideshow I presented at a recent ICT Cluster Conference. It is an overview of the eight days I spent in a Year 5/6 class.

Keynote Speech Presentation

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Teaching Experience time 'Writing'

My management of 'writing time' has been the same for all of my teaching career. Every time I show teachers how I do it, they think it is a brand new idea, but teachers have been doing similar things for nearly 30 years. I was fortunate to have started my teaching life in a wonderful South Auckland School with an inspiring Principal and an incredible management team. Staff PD was taken by 'experts' on the staff and what I learned at those sessions have carried me through my life of teaching. In later schools I taught at I gained many more strategies that lead me to fine tune my teaching practice. The management procedures I am going to write about I have used with New Entrant to Intermediate, Decile One to ten children.
As I have said many times, Management is the key to successful, productive teaching and learning. Children should know at any one time what they should be doing 'now' and 'next'. I spend a lot of time in teachers' classes, and one of the things I see frequently is children coming up to the teacher saying 'I have finished this, what do I do next?' Here are some of the management strategies and the teaching processes I follow to stop this from happening.
I present the students with a slideshow about the writing genre. There are examples of drafting and publishing, the process is broken down in stages, and there are links to website games.
Step One:
Every day we look at the slideshow but we will concentrate on one aspect. I usually write a class drafting example at the same time, reworking and editing everyday.
Here is the Explanation example I used with these children

How to write Excellent Explanations

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Here is a link to a Recount Example.
Step Two:
Modelling of Writing. Here are some examples of how to do this.

• in the school where I was demonstrating I used an Inspiration framework that I have designed
• this framework is worked on everyday until it is ready to be published as a class presentation
  

other examples are

• Using a notebook page in an IWB or mimo, insert a lined page template and write an example to be edited

• use the coloured pen editing tools, highlighting and line tools for editing
• no IWB but have projector; then use Word/Pages, type in the story, editing as you go
• KidPix: use the pen tool to write the story, change the colours for editing purposes

Step Three:
The Self Managing Taskboard
I have used this taskboard since the early nineties. When we start a writing topic everybody begins at the drafting section. Students then move themselves from drafting to proofreading. They follow all of the proof reading steps ( read aloud, peer proof read etc). Move to Conferencing.













Step Four:
Drafting
I like to give students plenty of choices when drafting. This encourages some of the reluctant writers as there are some new and different ways of drafting.















Step Five
Conferencing

While waiting to conference with the teacher students can 'do' the Conferencing choices. These cater for student's different learning styles, interests and intelligences. It also means that they always have something to do while they are waiting for me to conference with them.Part of managing themselves students record their conferencing choices onto a tracking file






Step Six
Publishing
After the student has conferenced with me we discuss which would be the best way to publish their work. Once their work is published they then start a new draft and work through the cycle again. Here is a slideshow with some examples of ways to publish your writing.

Publishing Writing Ideas

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Finally here is the Individual Explanation Assessment.

Teaching Experience time 'Maths'

The next few blog posts are going to concentrate on single curriculum areas and how I developed the management and organisation of the teaching and learning time.

Maths was an interesting one, I decided I wanted to teach a particular strand rather than 'Number' so I chose Measurement concentrating on Perimeter, Area and Volume. I wanted the children to become self managing and responsible about their learning so the unit I developed revolved around this idea. You can see the unit by Ctrl clicking (or Command click) on this link. Several years ago I had previously developed a statistics unit where everyday I would start off with whole class teaching session of around 5-10 minutes where I would demonstrate how to create the different types of graphs (laptop connected to a TV set). Students would then work independently through the large number of tasks while I targeted the children who needed help. This worked really well! I had no projector or IWB at this time. So my new challenge was how could I use the mimio to its full potential. And that is when I came up with the idea of the workshops. I created three different workshops; Perimeter, Area and Volume. I designed them so that the students could run it themselves using the mimio.
The daily session would start off with the Class Activity (One slide per day, the example below shows an example of 3 days with answers). If students got any of the problems wrong on the page then they had to attend the Workshop. Students could also choose to be present at the workshop if they wished. I overheard some children saying that they wanted to go to the workshop even though they got the class activity all correct. On observation it was apparent that they enjoyed the collegial working atmosphere.

Class Activity

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At the very first Workshop on Perimeter, I lead for the first 5 minutes and then it was obvious that the children could take over themselves, I put one person in charge telling them to make sure that everybody has a turn recording using the mimio pen.

Perimeter workshop

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On page 8 of this slideshow is a link to the very excellent bbc.co.uk site on perimeter. This was a perfect activity for children to do collaboratively and individually as it gives them the answers and totals at the end. Without any prompting from me the students went back and redid the quizzes they got wrong!
While the students were working on the workshop I was able to move around the room talking to individuals or groups if they had created their own group. Sometimes you would find a group of 2 or 3 at the Wii. Quite often children would work in pairs, but there was also several that liked to work alone. It was interesting to note each day that most children liked to work in the same pattern, either in a social group or on their own. The same children also volunteered for the workshop (they liked playing teacher I think!)

Area Workshop

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Over half of the class were able to organise their time without my intervention, and most (particularly the girls) were able to keep up with the recording of what they were doing. A lot of the boys liked doing the fun stuff with computers, Wii, PSP and iTouch, so they needed a bit of a push in the direction of covering some of the book tasks.

Volume workshop

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This was a great way to teach as I was able to oversee the whole class and work with the students who needed it the most. There was a relaxed, calm feel about the class as everyone got on with what they needed to do. I think the students liked knowing what they were going to be doing as soon as they came into the room as they had done the planning and thinking about it.

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

All of the maths websites were bookmarked on the Class Delicious site and all of the computers, Wii, PSP and iPod Touch internet browsers opened to the Class Delicious page as a Home page. With the Workshops being so visible due to them being projected on the screen with the students using the mimio, I was able to keep an eye on what the students were doing and if they needed any help.

Walking the Talk Day Five

I haven't seen the children since Thursday last week (ran a course for teachers on the Friday!) I was interested to see if they could remember the routines, I was pleasantly surprised, everything ran as if I hadn't been away. This reinforces what I always say to teachers... if you have strong routines, high expectations, and well organised management (and a quiet voice) all students will respond well. It doesn't matter if they are decile one or ten, they still respond in the same way. I did this same 'teaching experience' in a decile one class a couple of years ago, and a couple of teachers that have visited so far have seen me 'in action' in both schools, using the same management techniques and children reacting in the same way.

Most of the students are using the mimio well and are quite capable of calibrating it. Surprisingly enough we do not have to calibrate that often (maybe 3 times a day) even though the projector sits on a table in the middle of the room. Students have become very adept at it.

Everyday for writing I demonstrate a different way of publishing. Today I modelled Comic Life for Publishing. Children have used it before so several of them worked at it confidently. Some are working on Photo Story 3 (free for Windows), publishing on their wikipage or typing it up in Word or Pages with Borders, titles and their Superhero graphics. Some have published using the Publish button in Inspiration. One child has made a Podcast 'with a little help from his friends', all of which we will add to his wikispace.
I only have 3 more days left so I'm going to show them my 'Comic Slideshow' idea in PowerPoint and upload to Slideshare and how to create an iMovie in 3'easy' steps!

Update on Research topic: I think they get what I mean about creating Research questions and keywords. We will be searching for information tomorrow!

Walking the talk: Day three

The children are settling into their routines well. The early morning task went well with the timetabled students screen clipping the news headline, weather and this day in history. It was great to see other children helping the students if they were not sure of what they were doing.
We used the screen clippings later in the morning as the children who had collected them reported back to the class. We used the News Headline to highlight what keywords are, as this is a focus of our Research Unit.


Maths went well with more of the children starting to get the hang of organising themselves. There are still some children that need to be directed back to their assessment sheets. A few more internet problems happened but it all was going well by morning tea.
Writing time went smoothly with students going straight to their tasks once we had the teaching point of the day, which was conjunctions. We looked at conjunction game altogether. I used the mimio pad and that was passed around as students took turns at answering the questions 'with a little help from their friends'.




Everyday I like to show an example of excellent publishing, whether it is something that a child has done or a piece I have put together.
Today I demonstrated how you can turn an Inspiration framework into a published piece of writing.

Here is the Explanation framework, this is a piece I use for modelling.
I showed the class how you use the 'Transfer' button to transfer the writing into Word.









It appears with the Framework as a graphic and the text only also appears so that they can edit their work. It was really that 'just in time' learning as they learned how to highlight text, turn bullets off and use the decrease indent button to align the text to the right of the page.


Next I presented a finished exemplar reiterating my expectations of a high quality finish to their publishing.
I was very pleased with some of the work that was done after this teaching session!.









The Reading programme went very well with all children on task and doing a variety of activities from adding to their Chapter Title Assignment, Listening to Audiobooks via iPod, cloze activities using the mimio...or just reading!




Students decided on their Research Question today after a lot of drawing out of the previous knowledge they had attained, but more on that another day!

Walking the Talk Day Two

The first half of the day was beset with internet problems but between the IT teacher and the technician at the school everything was running smoothly for the second half. It is difficult to run a programme that is heavily internet based when the internet is not working well, so that was a good lesson for me. If you want your students to work on computers during this time then have a back up plan in place.

In maths the children are working on perimeter, area and volume. Luckily in their Assessment sheets they have plenty of other activities they can be doing when the internet falls down, but I will need to put some more non-internet computer activities in a folder for them. I have plenty of numeracy ones that I have written for their level so I will have those on standby.

I ran the perimeter Workshop today, or I should say the kids did! They took over the mimio pen and worked through the notebook pages. They didn't really need me, once they knew how to work it out! Which left me able to wander around and see what the other students were up to.

The expectations I have for the children is for them to become self managing with their learning. They have to work out what they need to know and plan when they are going to complete their tasks.
Here is the example of the perimeter tasks and area tasks.
They have internet sites, some of which can be accessed with the Wii, PSP and iTouch. So far we have used the Wii with great success. The school has an LCD screen on wheels, which I have grabbed everyday, one of my students sets it up which takes about 2 minutes. He goes straight to the internet, and then to our favourites and then to the class Delicious site that the classroom teacher Julia, had set up previously. I have organised it into some Curriculum areas and group folders with more to be added soon.
The students can easily access all of the websites their teacher and I want them to access. We have set up all the home pages on the computers to go to this site as well. It is also a great site to send children to for homework (which I did tonight!). Purchasing a Wii for around $400 is a cheap option for creating another access point for internet. Some schools have taken it further such as BBI in Auckland and are using the Wii as an interactive whiteboard. The Wii in the class is a popular option, children are using it for learning games and will be using it for searching the internet. Today Julia and I observed 'one character' multi tasking, he was listening to an audiobook on the ipod and playing a reading game on the Wii, but more on that later!
I soon realised that the children need a lot of help in 'becoming self managing'...particularly the boys! They go for the fun options first while most of the girls, were doing the activities that would improve their understandings of the concepts. There is going to have to be more direction for these students. They also needed to be reminded that they have to sign off their tasks as they do them. Am I expecting a lot? Yes, but they will get there with perserverance on my part.

Writing and Reading time was whirlwind, children are having to come to grips with the routines and also the self managing of what tasks to do. I will go into this in more depth in later posts.

In the afternoon we carried on with more Inspiration activities leading up to their Research topic. These students have grasped the technical skills of Inspiration incredibly quickly, you show them once and they are away. We just need to work on the content some more!

Walking the Talk Day One

Today was the first day of my 'Walk the talk'. I am teaching in a Year 5/6 class for 2 weeks (first 4 days of each week).
This is a Decile 10 school, with very capable children. It was a totally mac school until the recent purchase of some linux netbooks. The class of 28 children has 3 E-Macs and 1 teacher laptop. I have taken another iMac, a Windows computer and 4 Windows laptops and and a netbook. I was able to get them all onto the internet which is great as most of my planned programme is Internet based.
The most exciting thing for the students was the LCD TV and the Wii. They all thought they were going to be jumping around playing tennis and bowls, but that rumour was quickly dispelled as I showed them how it can access the internet wirelessly and I had some maths games bookmarked.
It was also noted that I had iPods, iTouch, and a PSP.
Once I set up the computers and the mimio, the children started filtering in, the first child was a bit of a character and very interested and capable with all things digital. He has become my main man and by the end of the day, he was teaching others how to use the mimio, access the internet sites on the Wii, save files to memory sticks and any other troubleshooting problems that arose. His job is to now train another person, and then it will snowball from there.
I showed the children my planning and told them how they could access it from my computer. My 'main man's' job is to get it set up in the morning from now. I set the routines of
1. Before School 3 different people per day have to click on the Morning Routines, one to look at the Weather, one to pick a news headline and one to find out what happened this day in History. I showed them how to Screen Clip the item they want to share to a new page in the mimio Notebook.
We needed to discuss how you need to read what you are going to screen clip so that you understand it enough to read and talk about with the class.Will be interesting tomorrow to see how the kids cope with it.
2. I showed them their spelling words which will be on the screen for them tomorrow, and set the routine of Bells ring - come in - start Handwriting card - move on to Spelling activity (on screen) - practice Keyboarding which will be on the Wii. More about this tomorrow!

This school streams their maths classes, so I lost most of the kids to other classrooms and had to train up a new lot. These are very able top stream students and seemed quite taken aback when I told them they were going to be teaching themselves, managing their own learning and booking me when they needed help! I gave them a pretest I had created on perimeter, area and volume. We then marked it and they had to write down on their Student Assessment Tracking sheet what areas of the test they needed to work on more. I showed them all the activities that were going to available in books, worksheets, computers, internet, Wii, PSP and iPod Touch. Tomorrow is when they have to come in, choose their activity or learning opportunities. I have told them I will be running a Perimeter Workshop which is their choice to attend...shall be interesting! More tomorrow!

The Literacy part of the day was Explanation Writing where we looked at the PowerPoint.

How to write Excellent Explanations

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This will be broken up and different parts concentrated on over the next few days. Children were very excited about the drafting and publishing possibilities. More about that later!

Ran out of time quickly for reading but was mostly about what the routines will be, and that students could choose from a wide range of Reading Options when they were not doing Guided Reading with me or related reading activity. More on this later.

The afternoon session was introducing them to the Class Wiki and especially the Wiki Promise



We made a start on our Research Unit. The children have been looking at Communication so I wanted to see what they had learned previously so they worked on an Inspiration diagram 'Fact Recall'. Tomorrow we are going to look at how to create a research question and find keywords.

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