Pencil Suites and Power Cuts

Day 24 of #28daysofwriting.  Almost over.  I am a little sad.  I know I will remain active on my blog, I love the habit too much now.  Maybe I’ll do #52weeksofwriting and write for 52 min once a week!

We celebrate new innovation.  The shiny new gadgets we have in the classroom…

I have a really great tool I would like to share.  Beautifully simple, it is accessible by all students, it is very intuitive, anyone can use it.  It requires no charging, which in a classroom environment is amazing.  It can help students to share their learning and develop their creativity.  Mistakes can be addressed really easily.  It is made of eco-friendly materials, and unlike tradition tech, it can be disposed of easily at the end of its life.  Everyone who isn’t using one needs to right now!

It’s a pencil…We don’t celebrate it, we don’t spout its benefits from the hilltops. We don't have Pencil Suites where teachers fight to try and get their class extra time on the school pencils. It gets the job done though.  Students use it when and how they need to share their learning.  So if we don’t celebrate the pencil why do we get all evangelical over the newest i-chrome-app-web-2.0-gadget?  Is it going to replace the teacher… I sure hope not because I like my job.

I am an avid supporter of tech in the classroom.  I think it is the vehicle for learning, an amazing tool that opens up learning possibilities for our students.  I know that I have blogged about useful web tools and apps and I have always tried to explain and justify their use in a classroom programme.  But apps and tools alone do nothing without some serious pedagogy behind what you do.

I was thinking today as @BridgeeNZ and I explained what we did with team teaching last year when we had too few devices.  I realised that underpinning everything we did were some core beliefs around learning.  

The Four C’s was one idea we tried to weave through our programmes.  Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration.  To do this we made sure that what we were doing with tech to achieve these goals was reflected in the pen and paper work the students did.

We tried to make learning fun,  relevant.  We tried to make sure our learning tasks were scaffolded and allowed students to use multiple ways to share learning.  We excited the students about their learning.

The last few nights I have been blogging about how I am starting my Daily 5 journey.  I know that tech will enhance what I am doing, apps will be used and YouTube videos will be watched.  But none of these things replace me, the teacher.  If the power goes off, or the internet drops out, I will still be able to continue.  Because the pedagogy of what I am doing sits within the Daily 5 and best literacy practice.

I saw this great little image tweeted by Shawn Blankenship (@Blankenship_S) and it really reinforced that our conversations around tech should always come back and focus on the learning outcomes, not the tools themselves.

So if your school has a Pencil Suite or if you panic at the idea of having no devices tomorrow maybe you should rethink what is really important in what you are doing, what are the big ideas and pedagogy that would still be important without the devices and apps. And then be thankful we live in a time where these devices are available!

The Power of the PLN

Today I attended #educamprotovegas and it was really great meeting so many passionate educators.  This event was a free UNconference.  People came, shared and learnt.  I recommend attending an EduCamp if you can.  

Today I saw firsthand the power of the PLN (Personal Learning Network).  A group of passionate educators coming together to share ideas to improve student learning.  #educamprotovegas was an event where I was fortunate enough to meet some of the people that I follow on Twitter.  It was really nice to put a face to a name and I was really impressed with all the great ideas that were shared.  

It was a real time version of what many educators are involved in online.  Developing and fostering connections, sharing ideas and working together for the benefit of students.  The PLN helps to break down the barriers of space and time and allows teachers to connect with others.  It get us out of what Steve Mouldey (@GeoMouldey) calles our own echo chamber, where we only hear our own ideas.  

So I fully recommend developing a PLN, connect with those in other schools, join Twitter, or Facebook or any other online tool that allows you to step outside your little part of the world!

Because if I had never joined twitter I would never have gone to #educamprotovegas and i would never have heard Kimberly Baars (@MissesArtech) talk about the Makersphere and all of the amazing things she is doing in it!  I would never have got to see a huge number of great little tools like OneTab, a chrome extension that can help manage all those browser tabs you have open at once that you don’t want to lose or forget.  If I hadn’t gone I wouldn't have had the chance to share some of my own little tips and tricks.  It was nothing mind blowing but it is always a great experience sharing tools with other educators in the hope that it might help them in some way.

I am a big ideas person.  And today my PLN was really helpful because it helped me to see the small little steps and the tools and resources that can help to make big ideas a reality.  So to my PLN and everyone at #educamprotovegas I would like to say a huge thank you and I look forward to seeing you all next time.

Thanks for reading my rather short and quick post today for Day 21 of #28daysofwriting.  And I would like to thank Annemarie Hyde (@Mrs_Hyde) for organising and running the day and being so welcoming.  I would also like to thank Steve Mouldey (@GeoMouldey) for his idea of an echo chamber and finally Kimberly Baars (@MissesArtech) for her inspiring talk about the Makersphere - Very sharp for a BT, will definitely be someone to watch out for in the future.

11 Great Digital Tools for the Classroom

It’s day 7 of #28daysofwriting.  A week down, a quarter of the way through.  If this were a marathon the lactic acid would be starting to build up.  Today I thought I would just share some of the digital tools and apps I have used effectively.  I hope you find the list useful.

So here goes, here is a list of some of the best hardware, apps and web tools that I have used over the last few years.  They are in no particular order, just a random pile of thoughts and ideas that I can manage in 28 min at 9pm on a Saturday night!

1) Google Docs:  The go to simple document write in the GAFE (Google Apps for Education) set of tools.  Fantastic for work that doesn't need to look amazing.  It has a brilliant commenting system that can be used for students to collaborate on work and as the teacher you can and highlight sections that need review and attach your comment to the particular section of the work.

2) Google Slides:  Much more powerful than a slide show creator this is the place where you can create documents as you would in publisher or word with layers and directional text.  It takes a bit of getting used to and you have to remember the dimensions for A4 paper for the page setup but if you want to make something pretty in GAFE... use Slides.

3) Google Forms:  Great way to survey your class and community.  Can also be used to create quizzes.  From here all of the data goes to…

4) Google Sheets:  This is excel for GAFE.  Great for sorting raw information and data and you will need to use it to set up classes and students if you are using Hapara Teacher Dashboard.  There are some really cool add ins for Sheets.  My favourite is Floobaru an app that allows you to mark and analyse students answers from a Google Forms quiz.

5) Hapara Teacher Dashboard:  This is an invaluable tool for any school wanting to use GAFE effectively.  It allows you full control over all of you students’ accounts.  You can see all of their recent work at a glance and can even see their screens if you have the right set up.  You can group students and Smart Copy templates and work into their Google Drives.  I would definitely recommend this tool.

6) Storybird: This great little web tool is a place where students can select amazing pieces of art to use as inspiration for their writing.  The students loved it and we had some amazing story come from students using this tool.  Definitely give it a go!

7) Piktochart:  This great online tool is amazing for making class displays.  It makes those awesome longform infographics and with very little experience you can make great looking displays.  They can also be embedded into websites.

8) Prezi:  This is an interesting alternative to the traditional slide show.  The slides sweep and zoom in and out around an image or diagram and it is much more visually appealing.  Student will enjoy the change and like presenting their learning in an interesting way using this tool.

9) Garageband: The go to music creation tool.  If you have access to iPads or Macbooks this is an amazing piece of software.  Students can produce professional sounding music in no time at all.

10) iMovie: Really intuitive and easy to use video editing software.  I have used it with both junior and senior students and they love it.  Great for recording reading too.  It has a cool feature call Trailers which come out like … Movie Trailers and its a great way to share  learning and what has been happening in the class or school.

11) Scratch & Scatch Jnr: Web and iPad versions allow students to learn how to code computer programs in a simple and visual way.  Great way to introduce coding into a class and is a great activity to use in Maker Time.

Well I better stop there  have 2 minutes of the 28 left.  I hope you enjoyed the list it is far from complete!  Maybe I will do a part two… Thanks for reading the post and please comment on any tools you find really useful in your class.