Split Three Ways
A Teacher’s Mind At The End Of The Week
Official Google Blog that it was no longer going to support Google Wave at the end of 2010, pulling the plug on a tool that I believe had great learning potential for students and teachers.
Google wave had been on my radar for quite some time. It was on the ever expanding list of Web 2.0 tools to check out. When I finally did get to it, Google had just announced that it was opening it up to everyone and enabling access via Google’s suite Education Apps which our students at North Fitzroy Primary enjoy using. This was perfect timing as it was the beginning of the school year and so I quickly dived into the ‘mind bending’ world of the Wave.
At the same time Google had also updated their Docs enabling real time collaborative editing and chat functions to most of their tools. My students love the chat function built into their email. Having the chat function built into their Docs was going to be a real plus making it possible for them to use the chat for collaborative purposes rather than just a social communication tool. Some of my students were quickly onto this feature and have been collaboratively writing some amazing stories which they are now doing in their own time for enjoyment. The new additions to Google Docs helped ease the students into some of the “free flow” architecture of Google Wave. At first they treated it like another chat tool and some soon realised that the conversation didn’t just disappear into the ether like their other chat tools.
During term holidays we usually set the students a blogging challenge. Last term this was changed into a ‘Web 2.0 Challenge’. The challenge was a series of online activities the students needed to complete. Some of which were 4 Google Waves. Each Wave contained a controversial question that the students need to answer. For example ‘Should school require students to wear a uniform?’ (North Fitzroy Primary has no school uniform requirements) and ‘Does television have a negative influence on society?’. Each question was designed to elicit some discourse between students using Google Wave. There was some great discussion between those students who participated and some convincing arguments put forward. Each argumentative Wave also contained a poll however, I found that some of the students tended to just answer the poll rather than join the discussion.
Examples Below.
Persuasive writing Wave
Persuasive writing Wave 2
In term 2 I had the pleasure of working with a group of grade 5 boys using Scratch. Part of our role in the Achievement Improvement Zone (AIZ- a Northern Metropolitan Region initiative) we are focusing on engagement in grade 5 boys. Data from our student surveys indicated that some grade 5 boys expressed a diminishing interest in learning and school. Introducing gaming and game making was seen as a strategy to help lift engagement with this cohort. Along with playing games like Civilization IV during our rich task unit, this group of boys will also start creating games using scratch. Looking for a platform where all the boys could meet, collaborate and communicate, Kynan Robinson and I decided that Google Wave would be the perfect platform. Google Wave became the place where the boys could share their ideas, thoughts, reflections and importantly create their own help desk. It also became a place for them to share their finished games by simply creating a link to their Scratch page.
Our Term 3 Extend Your Talents (EYT) group has has been a load of fun to work with. Kynan and I wanted to get a bunch of students together to test, review and use some Web 2.0 creative tools. Again we used Google Wave as the meeting place. Click here to view Wave. (this is a copy of the original Wave demonstrating the task) The project was based around 11 online web 2.0 creative tools. Kynan and I had tried a few but not all. We wanted the students to test drive each one and rate it. After they had reviewed each tool the students had to choose at least one to create a work of art to post on their blogs. Google Wave proved to be the perfect platform for such a project. Each tool that was listed was allocated a poll so that the students could rate each Web 2.0 tool as they went. The Wave was also used as a communication tool allowing students to instantly post their thoughts, ideas, successes and failures.
The students have really enjoyed this project. The main factor for this was the self directed nature of the task. Kynan and I basically left the students to their own devices. We merely facilitated the project. The students had to attempt to trouble shoot any issues themselves before they came to us. The collaborative nature of the Wave, which was mainly used for communication, and Web 2.0 tools promoted student engagement. The students really enjoyed being able to chat and express themselves. Sometimes things got a little messy as some of the conversations were off topic. However, I found this not to be too much of a distraction as the students were totally engaged by the creative nature of their task.
Below are some blog posts with student finished work. The online tools that the students used and reviewed can be seen in the ‘Wave example’ mentioned above.
http://fer0001.globalstudent.org.au/
http://cha0006.globalstudent.org.au/
http://har0057.globalstudent.org.au/
http://col0006.globalstudent.org.au/
More than 1600 Victorian schools are about to get the Ultranet – an online portal and ”virtual classroom” Education Minister Bronwyn Pike championed and promised that it will transform the way students learn (The Age 16 March 2010).
I have just finished the first two days of training as an Ultranet Lead User along with 4 of my colleagues (my Principal being one of them). Here is my reflection and initial thoughts and why there is no way the Ultranet will ‘transform the way students learn’.
As soon as I had seen the first Power Point presentation delivered to Ultranet Coaches and Principals by Dianne Peck (Business Owner, Ultranet), I was wondering how the Ultranet was going to work. I couldn’t believe that the main premise for its construction was around safety and that this would be provided via a closed environment. How is this possible? We had just adopted Globalstudent across the school as our main blogging tool – an online live digital portfolio and a portal into the classroom of every grade in the school. Every student from grades 3-6 has their own personal blog. This wasn’t a closed environment but open for the world to see. Why would we want to use the Ultranet? One of the main benefits of using Globalstudent is the authenticity of having a live real audience view your successes. It is possible for Gllobalstudent users to set their permissions to private and/or save their work as drafts? This can be easily done with three clicks. Ultranet users will be confronted with a confusing array of permission choices as difficult as Facebook’s (see image below). At our school we take Digital Citzenship and safety seriously. We teach students strategies for staying safe on the internet and we guide teachers and parents on how to best deal with internet safety issues. I believe it is best to teach children how to operate safely in a real life cyber environment rather than restricting their experience in the name of keeping them safe.
I have often been asked the question- is this technology 5 years too late? My reply is yes. My school was part of the original Ultranet trial. Yes, it was a resounding failure. We invested a lot of time and thought trying to apply it to the primary school context. The technology was clunky and it didn’t work. The technology just wasn’t there. However, we all could see its potential and really enjoyed engaging in conversations about teachers collaborating and sharing ideas and students accessing learning tools and also sharing ideas. That’s why we spent the next 4 years looking for alternatives. In fact our Ultranet coaches encouraged us to do so. Hence, the Globalstudent blogging tools and our use of the Google education applications. The teachers and students at our school have taken to these applications like ducks to water. Teachers use the Google docs folders and applications to plan and share, and the Principal is invited to collaborate. The Principal has access and can contribute to the team/teacher folders and can view all the term planning. Students take notes whilst watching documentaries and share them in our class folder for all to view. They can upload their Powerpoint presentations to Google Docs and grab the code and embed it into their blog. Google has just released a major update for all their Document tools which includes Google Drawings where students will be able to create mind maps and/or flowcharts, to just name a few. Will this technology exist in the Ultranet? Will the Ultranet continue to have regular updates to keep up with emerging technologies? (as I am writing this into Google Docs a colleague is reading and editing). One would hope that Victorian teachers and students weren’t short changed. At this stage, I have only seen wikis, blogs, slideshows, the potential to embed video (tried, didn’t work) and the ability to upload documents which cannot be viewed inside the Ultranet. Unfortunately, the Ultranet is 5 years too late. Why should we be burdened with this?
Creativity is essential for both teachers and students. Teachers need to be given the time to think creatively about their planning and how they can deliver their lessons. Students need to engage in their learning through their inventiveness. Whilst we were waiting to get onto the Ultranet, there were many discussions about how it was going to help with teaching and learning. I was trying to ascertain where the creativity would happen? What is the purpose of uploading photos (one at a time) to create a slide show? Surely having the students capture the images in context of the task, is the most important element of creating the slideshow? Especially if no one can see it. Do we need to rely on the Ultranet, the ‘network’ to be able to create something? To quote Gary Stager at ACEC 2010: “If we don’t have an effective network or access to fast broadband or a creative learning program underpinning the network then we should ‘cut the cord’. Computers are still extremely useful without the network. Maybe the “network” ie the internet is getting in the way of constructive learning.” (Thanks to Steve Collis you can see and listen to the complete Keynote at Happy Steve’s blog)
Access may be a real problem for schools that haven’t yet engaged in a 1 to 1 program. I am a strong believer in the power of 1 to 1 in the classroom. However, schools may feel that to take full advantage of the Ultranet that they need to fast track a the 1 to 1 developments and purchase substandard machines. The jury is still out on whether netbooks, for example, are the appropriate machines for creative learning environments. There has been some questions asked as to whether there will be a ‘hand held’ device interface developed for the Ultranet. With so many schools using these where will the Ultranet fit in to their profile?
My first experience of the Ultranet wasn’t a pleasant one. After being bitten once before during the first Ultranet trial, I was hoping it would be more positive. I am acutely aware that I am part of cycle one of the first release and glitches are to be expected. However, one would expect that we would at least have access for more than a few hours during the first two days of training. One hour in the morning before it went down on the second day is not good enough. For the complete array of applications to be not ready and not fully functional is not good enough. I cannot believe that for the past 4 years I have acted as an agent for change (still am) and now I find myself in a position of reaction. It is unfair that DEECD and the State Government has foisted an unfinished product upon us. Especially when many schools have worked tirelessly getting themselves Web 2.0 ready only to be given the bare bones. This is purely a political decision and a bad one.
The students and I have been champing at the bit for the past couple of weeks because we have missed a few of our Civilization IV sessions due to public holidays. We have however, been able to concentrate on some of the accompanying learning activities the form the rest of the rich task.
Apart from actually playing the game, we were hoping to get the students to develop hypothesis that would then help them to think about various strategies that they would employ to win the game. These would then need to be supported with real life historical examples of civilisations that ‘have stood the test of time’.
So the students are now beginning the research component of the rich task. They will need to find out
What do you think has made civilisations great throughout history? Do you know examples of some great historical civilisations? Your task is to undertake a research assignment. There are two options from which you can choose:
Option 1:
Research two or more great historical civilisations and identify features of them that made them successful
Option 2:
Research two or more features that made various civilisations great throughout history.
Accompanying each option is a range of sub questions to help guide the students in their research. The enthusiasm for beginning the research was awesome. Clearly, playing Civilization IV had influenced the level of engagement with this assignment. The students knew that any information they could gather was going to assist their game play.
I wanted to mix up the sources of information for this assignment. Obviously the Internet was going to be their major source as well as various reference materials from the school library. Showing a documentary on the beginnings of civilisation would be a welcomed alternative for the audio/visual learners in my class. Guns, Gems, and Steel was the right choice. Jared Diamonds hypothesis as to why the Papua New Guinean Tribes didn’t modernise at the same time as the European/Middle Eastern countries was a compelling one based around geography and animal husbandry. The students could see the correlation to real life historical theories and what was happening in Civilization IV.
I had seven capable students taking notes straight into Google docs that are going to be shared with the rest of the class. We discussed the notes that they had taken. You could see the penny drop for most when the students began to discuss strategies such as building more farms or how do I acquire sheep and or other domesticated animals, crops and fresh water. Where they settled their first city became a hot topic. Suddenly, they were discussing the importance of geography and other resources that would assist in the growth of their Civilisation.
Trying to put the finishing touches to the school ICT newsletter I need to find out what games students liked and why? I was trying think of a way to collect this information when I had a brain wave. Lets just use the ipod touch and record their thoughts whilst they were at recess.
Cash Or Additional PD?
A quick vox pop: If you were to supervise a student teacher, would you prefer your (minimal) payment to be pooled for the teachers at your school to use for additional professional development activities, or would you prefer to get the cold hard cash in your hand (roughly $10 after tax)?*Required
We have been having discussion at school about whether we as a staff should continue to pool the money that we receive from the universities for supervising preservice teachers or pay it directly to the individual teacher. It works out to be roughly $10 a day after tax. This is because under our current tax system it is considered a second job and we are tax at the top rate of 45%. However, if it is pooled and used for additional PD for staff to use then its not counted as income. I am very interested in the opinion of my personal learning network. Please fill in the above shot poll.
Thanks in advance
Andrew
Today was the first day of our Rich Task unit where the students are going to play Civilization IV and use it to stimulate further learning. Kynan Robinson and I have been looking for a ways to introduce games based learning into our classrooms and when I brought this up with my Level 4 team mate and colleague Peter Olm he suggested Civilization IV. Peter’s knowledge and enthusiasm for the game was infectious and as a team it was quickly decided that this was going to be the bases of our unit. Civilization IV is a turn based game where the player/students will take charge of a beginning civilisation at the beginning date of 4000BC the aim is to build a civilisation that will ’stand the test of time’. The game requires deep level thinking skills and strategising as well as building a knowledge of historical events that enable the students to create a civilisation that will ultimately be successful. The students will also need to develop an understanding of government, economy, foreign relations, managing of resources, development of cities, scientific research and technological advancement, improvement of infrastructure and so on.
As part of this process, students will develop hypotheses about how to best meet the any of the six victory conditions as set out in the game with the ultimate goal of creating a successful civilisation to “stand the test of time”. In doing so, students will act as historians in researching and evaluating historical information about real-life examples of civilisations. Using the information that they have gathered, they will consider key factors, advances, prominent people, crucial decisions, problems and events the development, progress, successes and failures of historical civilisations. They will use this information to assist them in developing their hypotheses and strategies and when making important decisions and taking action in aiming meet the victory conditions of the game.
I wanted to draw their attention to the Focus questions and Key Concepts. Concerned with information overload. I really only wanted to discuss the first two but displayed the rest for tomorrows reflection.
They are:
What is a civilisation? What are the characteristics and traits of civilisations?
What are the different eras and prominent periods in the development and existence of major civilisations? (Ancient, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, Industrial and Modern)
What discoveries have been crucial in the advancements of civilisations?
What factors influence the progress of civilisations over time?
What factors might make civilisations successful or unsuccessful?
What are some of the benefits or negative side effects of civilisations?
How do our understandings of civilisations influence the decisions we make and the way that we live our lives today?
What does it mean to be a historian? (Using historical reasoning to interpret accounts of past events and make judgements about how to act in the present day)
What are some of the problems with accounts of history?
The Tutorial alone can be quite complicated and it takes nearly 45 mins to complete. Instead I wanted them to experience the awe and wonderment of the opening sequence of the game. Lights out and the cinematic display of the IWB, with the sound up did the trick. The students couldn’t wait to start playing. I did start with the first 5 minutes of the Tutorial because the Second Life like tutor explained the basic moves and initial plays in a succinct manor. However, in hindsight I should have just modeled the beginning game myself.
As expected the students took to the game like ducks to water. Questions of ‘how to move this’ and ‘how to do that’ flew around the room. It was great that the students didn’t just ask me questions but sort council from their peers. This became more apparent as they advanced further into the game. Of course we had the usual suspects who went straight into war and had their Civilisations wiped out because they hadn’t developed enough resources. Others were more thoughtful and gradually built their Civilisations complete with mines, roads, farms and military defences.
We are only at the beginning of the unit and already I am starting to see the benefits with engagement and learning. At the end of the day we had an hour of refection. I wanted them to answer questions which they collectively devised.
What is Civilization 4 and how do you start a game?
What are your feelings about the game?
What mistakes did you make when playing the game?
How could you improve your game strategies?
Tips for someone new to the game.
I have several reluctant writers in my class who wrote for the most of the hour. One of these is an ESL student who wrote an entire page of tips and strategies. He normally struggles to write a paragraph let alone a page in the last hour of the day. Some of our high achievers wrote about meetings with other civilisations and strategies on how to maintain peace and harmony and reasons for doing so. Others discussed how they thought that developing more workers was a great strategy because it meant that they could build more infrastructure which lead to faster growth. Every student in the class wrote that they enjoyed the game.
Our foray into games based learning has been a clear winner in with my grade 5 class. I can’t wait to continue and see where the students take it next.
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Carmela Guglielmino (the excellent teacher that I share my grade 5 class with) and I like our students to create a set of personal goals each term. They can range from academic to sporting goals and don’t have to relate to their classroom learning.
We have decided that the should publish their goals on their personal blogs encouraging the students to share them with their parents. They will also be reflecting on their goals at the end of the term. These reflections will be attached to their semester report and will be used to generate discussions with students and parents during end of interviews.
The students can present their goals in anyway they want but most have chosen to present them as mind maps or concept maps. Originally I suggested that they use buble.us which is an excellent online collaborative mind mapping tool. However, Google have recently updated their suite of Documets tools (Google Docs) to include Drawings. Having just watched the above video and had a little play I am now going to suggest that they use Google Drawings. We subscribe to Google Education Apps as part of our email system and this is a welcome addition.
I am also looking forward to using the new Google Docs layout tools when planning with the team tomorrow. The live document editing viewer is going to be very useful. So too will the inbuilt chat function.
Welcome to plentysmart’s Google quiz.
Google. The possibilities are nearly infinite. Do you know it as well as you’d like? If not, try out our quiz. Google’s help pages can be found here.
I just challenged myself to this test via plentysmart.com. It asks the question Do you know it (Google) as well as you’d like. At first I thought that it was going to be a general knowledge test on Google but it turned out to be more interesting than that. The questions were based around your knowledge of using the correct terms when using Googles search engine. I hadn’t really thought about this before and when completing the quiz was amazed that I didn’t know a lot of the answers. Ok I did get 6 out of 15 (which according to the quizmaster is above average) but that was sheer luck and selecting what might be the obvious answer. I wasn’t surprised by the actual average of around 1.6!
I wonder what my students would score? I am definitely going to challenge my students to this quiz. A subsequent discussion might be useful in emphasising some of these search terms and learning some efficiencies when searching on Google.
Student blogging has continued to grow at North Fitzroy Primary School. It has been a pleasure to watch our students engage in ICT through their student blogs. It’s wonderful to see their individuality and personalities shine through. I especially like some of their thematic ideas. Read more below…
Homework
Welcome to your homework page. All you need to do is click on the homework link to download. If this doesn’t work please let me know.
Homework Week 7
Coach Approach Clinic Photos: Alternative English Homework. Download some images. Upload them to your blog. Write a description (minimum 2 Paragraphs) about the mornings activities.
Weekly Spelling week 7
Homework Week 6
Homework Week 5
Maths
Below is the Homework for Week 4 Term 1 and Weekly Spelling Words.
Leave a Comment
Student blogging has continued to grow at North Fitzroy Primary School. It has been a pleasure to watch our students engage in ICT through their student blogs. It’s wonderful to see their individuality and personalities shine through. I especially like some of their thematic ideas.
Each teacher or class has their own class blog. The class blog has become an important modelling tool as well as opening up the classroom to the wider community. I have also found my class blog to be a valuable teaching tool as well. All the students have bookmarked the class blog or committed the url to memory. So it is easy to host lesson links for students to reference. Creating links to my Picassa web albums for students to download and add to their own blogs have been very useful.
Having students access their homework has proven to be a great way of getting parents to view our classblog. However, many of them are yet to comment on it. I think that some pro active letter writing or parent activity is needed. Maybe I should invite them to become contributors as well? Generally our homework has been worksheet based but the alternative homework ideas that involve blogging have become very popular.
Even though I have administrator rights to all my student blogs, I have chosen to take a minimal intervention approach. Hoping to foster their individuality and creativity. I do subscribe to all their blogs through my news reader and check them weekly. This allows me to monitor but also facilitates my ability to comment on them. I will also have non cyber discussion with my students about their individual blogs. It’s a really great way to keep up with their interests.
There has been some issues arise however. The students have become very interested in glitter graphics to decorate their blog. We have had numerous discussions on the pros and cons of a cluttered blog. I have noticed that some student have taken down some of these. The usual spelling and gramar issues are evident. However I hope that as the students develop an awareness of the audience and that others are reading their posts that this will motivate them to improve in these areas. The student have also taken to hosting vimeo videos on their blogs. I don’t mind this but I am encouraging them to do this purpose and context of some description. Ie Basketball playing obsessed student including Michael Jordan’s top Ten Slam Dunks is encouraged to include a written description of why he has put this on his blog.
Averages: Mean, Median and Mode
We recently gave the students a short diagnostic at the beginning of term so we could determine what areas of Maths we needed to pinpoint before the end of the year. One of indicated areas of weakness was Mean, Median and Mode often covered in the dimension of Measurement Chance and Data. So I set myself a task of designing a lesson that integrated ICT and working with averages.
I have quite a few kinesthetic learners in my grade 4 class and I really wanted to engage these students right from the beginning. Therefore the first part of the lesson the students need to collect some data that related to their physical selves. These included simple measurements like the length of the their arm, height, how far they can jump from a stand still, how long it takes to do one lap of the basketball court, how long it takes to say the alphabet. Not only was this a great way to get the students to move around the classroom and school but it also integrated some measurement as well. With great enthusiasm they had collected their data in next to no time. Download “What Measurements You Need To Find” Work sheet.
Once they had collected the measurements they were then required to jump online and input their data in the Google form. I love google docs! We have just started to explore them as a school when we migrated our entire student email system over to the Google Apps Education package. Google Forms is one of the document types you can choose from. It is a brilliant tool that lets you customise your form in many ways. 
You add the questions or the desired content with help information for each question if needed. Google Forms allows for a range of question types for example: standard text or paragraph question, multiple choice, check boxes, choose from list, grid and scale. When your content has been added then you’re able to choose from a range of templates to suit your taste.
Types Of Documents
Once the Form is created there are a number of options to share and promote it. Emailing it out can be very effective. In fact you receive the form inside the email and the data can be submitted without having to go to the web. Secondly, you can host or post the link out which will take you to the live form. Thirdly, Google Forms allows you to embed the form into a web page or blog. This could be really effective if you have a class blog ,all you would need to do is grab the HTML code and embed it into a post or page and direct your students to it. For this lesson I chose to host the link on our intranet which then took the students to the live form. 
What happens next is one of the most intuitive aspects of google docs. Once the students have submitted their data via the form it then goes to a spreadsheet. Having the live spreadsheet up on the IWB watching the data submitted live was incredibly effective. The students were already starting to analyse the data as it was coming into view. Generally most were comparing their times around the basketball court 
. The spreadsheet can then be shared with who ever you want. Saved as a PDF , shared as a link on the intranet, emailed as a link to a live web page or kept private. Google spreadsheets doesn’t have many of the features that Excel offers but its the ability to view and share it on the web that makes it a really powerful tool. I have Shared the Spreadsheet here. Please make a copy of it.
Finally, the students were given calculators and after a discussion/refresher on Mean, Median and Mode were then challenged to analysis the data and present their findings. Each pair was given a print out of the google spreadsheet and using the old fashioned book, pencil and ruler drew up tables to assist in their presentations.
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