Create

Getting started with Virtual reality

9/3/2017

Melbourne University send a box of cardboard VR viewers to our careers teacher and she did not need that many. This was the start of something wonderful.

I grabbed that box and put the call out for anyone who wanted to do go on an in-cursion - a deliberately vague invite that got zero responses. So then I tried again, however this time I looked at the curriculum in Years 7 & 8 and invited specific people to come along.

Thus the Year 7 HUMS team an Head of Faculty were the first to jump into VR. They were studying natural disasters so wha better way to get students to understand the impact of these then to immerse them into some! These were the videos we selected;

Students were spoken to a few lessons prior and invited to bring along their smart phone with the fee App Youtube installed and headphones. We also looked at what VR is and how it works in this front loading session - see below for slides.

Up next we partnered the students up whilst one was immersed the other acted as a spotter to keep them safe and then we swapped over. This also aided those students who did not have a smart phone to access the VR world. Afterwards the teacher led a discussion and reflective piece to camera task drawing together the geographical and emotional impact of the events. The immersion helped the students see, hear and feel the events developing empathy and they gained previously unavailable insight into the widespread geographical impact. Not bad for a free box of cardboard headsets!

This also led to a teacher from the same team taking the idea and applying with me as a coach in her Year 11 LOTE class where students selected a Spanish speaking capital city and through Google streetview explored the neighbourhood providing information to a peer, refining their conversational and direction Spanish speaking skills as they explored a world they may not have seen before. See the slideshow to the left for details.

helping students see the solution as not actually the solution

11/2/2017

Design thinking through making where the process is more important then the outcome

Often I find that our students focus heavily on the outcome - in many cases what is assessed - rather then the journey it took to get there. Developing skills such as ideation, refinement, using data to drive thinking and growth, critical thinking, prototyping in part/full and the list goes on are what I am looking for in my learners so I decided to show they than - through the image on the right.

Watch the video below to hear more about the model.

Exploring new ideas with teachers through inquiry

22/5/2016

Teacher Inquiry and future planning for meaningful Professional Learning

Access the connect - extend - challenge guide here

Working within the IB across 4 schools in my current role has been the best way to further develop my understanding of the IB from PYP through to DP. What the IB does beautifully is integrate and foster connections between concepts and ideas, communities both local and global and allows for opportunities to students and teachers to be knowledgeable inquirers themselves.

A recent activity I have run with 2 schools is to invite staff as part of a 1 hour future planning session to embark on a teacher inquiry. Using the template to the left staff worked in vertical teams to explore the ideas presented prior to dot voting using an oversized inquiry task once they had found out a bit more about these things. Staff were able to ask colleagues, use existing school resources (human and print) and of course use the www to explore. The excitement and conversations generated from this were astounding – not only did the school have rich data about what teachers wanted to know more about but staff automatically started drawing connections between what is possible and what they are doing as part of the inquiry units and how they could be enriched.

Next we invited staff to respond to the prompts in a survey to work out not only what they want to learn, but how – an important question we consider for our learners. Some schools went on to gather additional staff information like benchmark data and competency with current systems.

One such workshop led to the development of a professional learning action cycle for 2 teams – one focussing on digital storytelling and how it can promote engagement with STEAM (particularly Science with some Technology) whilst the other group explored augmented reality to support community engagement within the School.

Staff developed an inquiry question, received some training using the 30:30 model (30 minutes to learn, 30 minutes to apply, explore) around some possible tools that could work to get them there and they went and tried something with their class after a 1:1 coaching session to help staff develop the proficiency with the tool or resources such as workflow to support it. The final session involved teachers coming back and sharing what they learned, student work samples and discussing what worked well and what they would refine next time with a wider peer group.

Everyone is a maker

10/11/2015

MaKEY MAkey and limitless imagination

When I first was introduced to MaKey MaKey by a colleague I watched the video to the right - and still had no idea what I was going to do with it! Or how, or why... But she really was excited and I wanted to know why. So off I went with my MaKey MaKey.

And I left it in the box until one day I got an extra class allocated to me. With no work left I grabbed the MaKey MaKey and her kit as well and headed off to Year 8 Health.

I showed them the video and then let them know thats about as much as I knew. Their lesson was to help all of us come up with a way to use this thing called MaKey MaKey. This also entailed working out how to set all this up.

75 minutes later we had a chair that made a noise when you had been sitting in it too long or were slouching in it and a ball that depending on where you touched it made a noise - the beginnings of some clever ideas!

We knew how to use MaKey MaKey, a Year 8 Health class understood basic programming in action and we had a great idea for a new way to teach players where their hands should be when training for a sport or when it was time to get up and move!

Sometimes I want you to think about what you have done…

16/8/2015

Exploring student summative assessment data to set new learning directions

We all know it happens – that moment when you give back a piece of assessment, your student looks at the %, the letter grade, the sliding feedback ranges and then their eyes glaze over knowing that is done and dusted and in most cases they have passed. The learners are not basking in the feedback I have crafted for them, they have not glanced at the rubric that indicates what they could do to improve, they are in fact laughing at the fact that they scored better than their mate “and I did, like, no work! LEL”.

And I want more from my learners. I want them to think about what they have done and to use that to scaffold where they go next with their learning. But how do I do that when they are clearly just happy to have passed and this whole concept of having a say over the direction of their learning and goal setting is so very new to them?

In short I gave them a choice – they had to pick one of 5 options. The options became more complex, feel free to stay with the first ones as you start exploring. The task was not negotiable, how they did it was. The prompts remained the same;

·      List 2 things you learned about the topic the assessment focussed on

·      List 2 things you learned about your self management when completing this task

·      What would you change next time you did a task like this?

·      What thinking (or personal management) skill would you like to work on during the next topic?

·      What might “working on” this look/sound/feel like?

Tap on a thumbnail to read more - and perhaps expand it to actually see it...

I gradually rolled both the prompts and digital tools out to learners, starting with a choice between2, then 4, then 5 over the course of a term. I often lost 20 minutes of my “teaching time” getting them sorted the first few times we trialled/used the tools. But the benefit was that when I ask my students to reflect now they get to it quickly using a tool that they choose, which not only allows them to reflect on their learning but also allows them choice over how they show their learning. I also had learners who did not get it as quickly as their peers, so with those learners I often led a workgroup where the whole group used the same tool and had a more structured approach.

and my work is done...

6/5/2015

30 minutes. Some thinking students. A whole lot of resources about mindfulness.

Want to find modern, up to date resources about things students are interested in? Give them a seed, an idea, a question, an inquiry, a provocation - and let them explore! I set aside 30 minutes with 16 year old students (Year 10) with the instructions as outlined to the right.

At the end of the 30 minutes I gave the students 15 minutes to explore each others resources.

Now I have resources I can explore and embed in my learning and teaching, that the students have ownership over and that will challenge us all. I have Ben & Mitchell super keen to lead the 100 days of happiness project with the class and the class are right behind them. And my work to find resources that are engaging, relevant - even the cat videos - and challenging is done!

View live padlet here

Created with Padlet

7pm Project

4/5/2015

Visual storytelling to get the conversations started

Stuck for a way to get students thinking and sharing their stories? Looking for a way to get students to start conversations about their lives and passions? Start a 7pm project!

This project works using student's smart phones. It starts by downloading the free App Steller

Get the Steller app

Then students set an alarm for 7pm every night for one week. The task is to take a photo of what they see. In class we bring together these images using Steller and publish them using the hashtag #7pm project. Not only can the students see their story come together as a digital storybook, but they can view their peers stories and start rich conversations about what they see.

A spin off from this and a more collaborative idea is to ask the students to take 1 single photo at a certain point in time and to send it to one person. Then that one person can collate the images into a storybook that visually represents a moment in time, shared by the group of people. See an example of this with adults to the bottom right. It worked nicely as a bonding exercise and formed a great memory for the staff involved.

I do advise you set some parameters together around what is suitable to capture and what your images can communicate when published in a public forum - in fact it's a great task for starting the conversations around what we post online!

#7pm project

A single creator, multiple group member version

Author discussions - circle time chat

16/4/2015

melbourne writers festival August 2015 - why not get talking sooner?

read the whole article here

I was in a Year 5 classroom recently exploring their class library. In fact I was more interested not what was on the shelves , but what was in the hands of the readers. Paul Jennings was. There was an argument about who got to read Unreal which ended with a student screaming "But I'm not Unbelievable - I'm Unreal" which made me giggle... These are books I remember loving and reading as a young reader years ago which got me thinking why can't we use circle time discussion to focus on an author? It happens all the time in the world beyond the classroom - look at the Melbourne Writers Festival program! So here are some circle time (discussion) prompts for teachers to use with their co- learners based on the conversation with Paul Jennings that appeared in Dumbo Feather, late 2011.

Do you see what i see?

15/4/2015

A QUICK, FUN, EASY CONVERSATION STARTER TASK USING 360 DEGREE IMAGERY TO SHARE WHAT YOU SEE

Sharing what we know and what we see is a powerful learning and collaboration starter. The $1.29 App 360 allows you to take 360 degree images and to share them. You can upload them as panoramic shots, turn them into stereoscopic views or post them to social media or for other 360 users to view. The beauty of this is when you move your device the view changes and spins around from all angles, immersing you in the image.

Suitable for students Year 5 and up (and it sits well with the IB unit Who we are & Where we are in place & time it sits well with Geography at Year 7/8 levels, it sits easily in exploring spaces in senior Art it even works well in Primary science when studying habitats - the list goes on!) the trick is to not move too much and to move slowly! Incidentally this is a great way to allow community members access to school grounds, physical classrooms and facilities in an engaging manner. They get to see the sights from all angles.

Top - Panoramic view

Middle - Stereoscopic view

Below - 360 view clip

Who would win a food fight between an octopus and a cupcake?

15/4/2015

Using coding and gaming in the App hopscotch to engage learners with numeracy, coding, thinking and reflection skills.

Ever wondered what to do with those students who really are quite good at numeracy? What about a bit of an extension project centered around coding for numeracy understanding and growth! I had the pleasure of working with an exceptional colleague, Megan Skinner, who had such a passion for and skill in making numeracy make sense for learners that I could not help but catch her enthusiasm!

Starting with the free App Hopscotch I began exploring how coding actually reflected a lot of numeracy skilled and mapped some of the tasks to the AusVELs curriculum. Hopscotch scaffolds learners by showing them videos as they work of what they are doing and providing gradually increasing in complexity levels for students to work through. Thus the Who would win a food fight between an octopus and a cupcake task? was born. Check out the specifics below, grab the student task sheet (shown on the left) or explore the lesson plan (below)- complete with AusVEL's mapped for you!

Task Overview
Using inbuilt videos the App Hopscotch guides learners through creating simple through to complex coded games that target number time and angle numeracy skills in a highly engaging platform. Linked to this are opportunities for students to set SMART goals based on success criteria and to blog and share their progress.

Success Criteria

Completion of training levels and reflection about how to use the App Hopscotch for coding
Creation of a food fight game for two players using Hopscotch that allows 2 players to throw food at each other
Self directed and self paced learning is shown and reflected in your own goal setting

Targeted Learners

Year 4 Students who are above the 12 months Numeracy AusVEL’s level
Year 5 Students who are above the 6 months Numeracy AusVEL’s level
Students who enjoy coding and capable with basic Year 4 Maths vocabulary
Students who are becoming or are already independent learners (this would also work with learning support staff facilitating it)