This is how we roll (out)

Happy Girls photo by @klbeasley

This is the third rotation of handing out laptops to our families. Our process has evolved quite a bit from it's inception in August 2011. Here are is an outline of what we do, why we do it, and how it's working.

Context: We are an independent international school with around 4,000 students across two campuses. Our students in grades 6-12 use a school-provided MacBook for the purpose of enhancing their learning.

Collaboration: This process is a true collaboration in every sense of the word and we're not claiming to have invented anything brand new. We'd specifically like to acknowledge the collaboration with our friends at Singapore American School and with Robyn Treyvaud. 

Overview: (Grade 5 moving to Grade 6)
June
- families attend "Growing up Digital" session together
- students participate in the "Eggcellent Adventure"
- families attend and "Out of the Box" session where they get their laptops
-student mentored by Grade 8 students
August
-support and learning in Mentor classes
-tools/techniques taught in academic classes
-parent sessions 

All in the Family: though some of our students already have access to their own technology, for some this is the first time the child has had a laptop of their own. We take care to help families establish a positive environment for digital media and laptop use in the home. 

We begin the process before the tool is even in the hands of the family by requiring parents and students to attend a "Growing up Digital" session where we scaffold a discussion between the parents and student around our Family Media Agreement. The understanding is that this document will be living and evolving as needed starting with a few agreements based on "pressure points" like time limits, where the laptop will be used, and expectations around completing homework.
It's important to note that this is a family agreement. There are considerations for all members of the family because modeling attentive behavior is really important.

Eggcellently Dressed

Proper care and feeding of the laptop is reinforced by students completing the "Eggcellent Adventure" where they carry a blown-out egg shell around for a week. Through this process they learn to be responsible for a fragile object and, should it break, they need to see a number of people like Heads of Grade, IT Support, Vice Principals, and the Digital Literacy Coach for a short chat and their signature on an "Insurance Claim report."
Read my daughter's account of the process and learning from the experience.

Next, we bring the family back in to collect their signed technology agreement forms, hand over their new laptop, and walk them through a presentation on points related to caring for and use of the laptop including common causes of damage, healthy use tips, warranty and insurance coverage, initial set-up of accounts, and some apps to help avoid distraction.

We round out the week with a mentoring session where Grade 8 students talk with the Grade 5s about peaks, pitfalls, and protips related to learning with the laptop. These tips were created by the students when challenged with the task of explaining the important points students with new laptops might need to know.


Ongoing support is given to students both during their mentor sessions when the new school year begins and in their other academic classes. Students are guided through the process of organizing their files and calendars, collaborating, communicating, setting up a reflective portfolio, and practicing our core values both online and in person. 

Again, we were fortunate to have so much support from a broad community of educators when setting up our process. We hope you find this useful and share with us any feedback if you've been through this process as a student or parent to make it even better.

Dealing with distraction, 5 tools to help you get things done

We have chosen to give our students in grade six upwards their own Macbook. This has obvious benefits to their learning allowing them to create, collaborate and communicate with digital tools that they always have at their disposal.  However, as Spiderman said:

There's no question that digital tools can be tremendously distracting. Our students have told us that, typically, they will go through a period of "experimentation" when they first get a new tool, join a new network, or find a new game. This stage (hopefully quickly) reaches a peak followed by students discovering strategies to help themselves deal with the distractions. Interestingly, they told us that what they really need is a consequence, like a bad grade, to make them realize just how much this is impacting them before they take steps to regain control.

Here are five tools that you can use to help deal with the digital distractions:

1) iProcrastinate is one of the most popular applications for our students.  It lets you create "subjects" that can match your school subjects and then create "tasks" for those subjects.  You select the "due date" and can set them up for repeat if needed.
For example, you might create a subject like "Activities" and set up a repeating alert for "Paws for a Cause" that meets every Monday at lunch. iProcrastinate lives in your menu bar at the top of your Mac and you can easily pop it open to see what you've got coming up.

As a bonus, unlike simply using calendar notifications, you can create "steps" to complete each task and even associate files that are relevant to the task.
This is a great program to use if you find yourself forgetting assignments or meetings and to organize all the bits and pieces that go along with them.

2) SelfControl is an application that you can configure to block certain web domains to help you not be distracted by the Internet. You can configure the app to prevent incoming email, block Facebook, web-based games, or any web domain or IP address.
Once you start SelfControl, you move the slider to block your listed sites for a set amount of time. The best part is that you can't undo it once you've started, not even by restarting your machine!

This is good for those times when you have a couple of "culprit" sites that suck away your hours (I'm looking at you Facebook). 

3) OMMWRITER is a funky text authoring tool that you can fire up when all you really want to do is write. It is a full screen app so blocks the view of everything else with a simple, zen-like background.

OMMWRITER would be a great addition for anybody who finds themselves distracted during the writing process by the temptation to try every font, color, style and layout found in full-featured word processing apps.

4) Pomodori puts a timer with a tomato (italian - Pomodoro) icon on your Mac. You can use it to set a specific amount of time for yourself to focus on one task. The idea is based on the Pomodoro Technique  of setting the timer manually which gives you a physical cue that now is the time to focus on work for a 25 minute period. As a way to motivate yourself, and prove that you're actually on task to your parents, you can tally up the Pomodoros as you complete them.

5) Set up a "Study Buddy" account with Parental Controls if you find yourself unable to resist the urge to open Skype just for a little chat while you study. Note: students do quite often use Facebook, Skype, and Twitter for homework help. But, if you think the balance might need adjusting, one approach you could take is to create a restricted account on your Mac.
Basically, what this means is that you can still maintain your regular account with normal access to everything (and everything that could pull you off task) and you create one or more accounts that you manage with Parental Controls.

Then, when you want to work in an environment with less distraction, simply log in to the "Study Buddy" account and away you go.  Check out the guide to 1) setting up the account and 2) configuring folder sharing so that you can access folders from the Study Buddy account.

What apps do you use to help you avoid distraction and stay on task?

*in collaboration with Katie Day

doing more with diigo

Diigo is a great way to keep track of all of your bookmarks in the cloud so that they can be readily pulled up on any device connected to the Internet. Yes, and...  there's a whole lot more that it can do.

Diigo works best when it's tools are integrated right in to your browser.  You can install the tools for any modern browser and enjoy the convenience of bookmarking, highlighting and annotating without interrupting your work flow.


Try this:

• Use the Highlight button to highlight text on a web page.  Your highlights stay and are visible to you when you come back to the page.
• Open a web page with an image and "right click" on that image...  you can save the image directly to you diigo account.
• Create a Smart Folder for a praticular tag.
• Join a Group and explore the sharing aspects of the group.  (UWC Teachers)

Using diigo with a class.

 You can create a group for your class(es).  Check with your Digital Literacy Coach to see if student accounts have already been made.  The best way to get them into your group is to choose option 3 - invite by email.
Establishing a Tag Dictionary for your group allows you to better organize your information and eliminate similar words that mean the same thing (i.e. Math, Maths, Mathematics).
You and your students can save things you bookmark to your group along with your annotations. As an added bonus, you can embed a widget that displays the group's links in your website, course page or blog.

What interesting uses of diigo will you try with your class?

Making Learning Visible - Mobile Video in PE

How do you know what you look like when performing a physical skill?

This is a question I ask myself again and again on the golf course when the round ends up going south.  Was it my elbow, my grip, am I shifting my feet, not keeping my head down?

For anybody who's watched an instructor demonstrate a skill I'm sure you know the feeling...  'Am I doing it correctly?'

Video on mobile devices has great potential to provide visual examples to learn from and feedback on performance.
We are fortunate to have a very progressive, committed team of Physical Education teachers who participated in an INSET day lead by the three digital literacy coaches. Here's what happened...

using mobile video to reinforce teaching
Here, we produced some short videos with teaching points included so that students could refer to the videos during the lesson on an iPod Touch when they may not have constant access to the teacher. These videos can be made quite quickly once you've got one set the way you like it, simply duplicate the project in iMovie and swap out the video segments and change the text.

using mobile video for peer feedback
A peer can be a really good coach when learning a new skill. The great thing about using peer feedback is that a lot of learning
can take place for the person giving the feedback as well, not just for the person performing. We talked a lot about being mindfully active and that's really what we're practicing here. Students shoot short segments of video (10 secs or less) on an iPod Touch, capturing only the action, and use it to help give feedback.
Having a video to "back-up" what you're trying to say can really help you make your point and we find that it also breaks down barriers that students may have. If they're shy, having the video immediately shifts the focus off of them and on to the person performing the skill.
A member of the PE department also brought up that video is great for capturing non-skill based
behaviors like cooperation, team-work, leadership, and focus.

using mobile video for self-analysis & goal setting
We shifted devices to the iPad 2 here so that teachers could get experience with shooting and doing simple edits using iMovie on one device on the spot.
The idea here is that students could have a peer record them performing a skill early on and then do a self-analysis by using the voice-over feature of iMovie. They can edit the clips, split the clips and even capture stills at particular points in the video simultaneously pressing the home
button & power button while the movie is
paused in full screen.

 using mobile video for assessing progress
Students can go further with the video they capture of their performances and take video at different intervals during a unit. These videos can be exported to their MacBooks to take full advantage of the editing tools available in iMovie for OSX. Using slow motion, reversing the video direction, and using picture-in-picture we can get a detailed view of different aspects of performing a skill.
The aim here is to show progress in specific aspects of a skill. The product is a video that can be a central part of a student portfolio for P.E. These portfolios can be shared with parents and could be used as assessment evidence. But mostly, it's really nice for students to be able to see how far they've come, especially if they feel like they're not being successful at all. The video can often reveal the progress they've made individually instead of what may be the tendency to compare yourself to the best person in the class. 

 

• Nuts & Bolts: using mobile video

Creating videos - Making a bank of teaching videos can be a collaborative effort and once they're done, you can reuse them again and again. Also, you may want to consider having students produce them (Digital Media Team or Techxperts possibly?). Once you've done one in iMovie it's a really simple work flow to just duplicate the project and then insert the new video clips and text.

Getting Video On - Uploading videos to your YouTube or Vimeo channel and then emailing the link to the device (MS/HS iPad iPod) is an easy solution but requires good access to wifi (which we found, could be a limitation in some teaching spaces). Alternately, you could ask the IT Dept. to upload a set of teaching videos to iTunes on the devices if you had enough lead time (1 week).

Shooting tips - Turn the device to landscape, keep it still by holding with two hands and bracing, think about the angle - side, back front...  what's best to see the action?, capture only the action - not before and after, shoot SHORT segments - less then 10 seconds is often sufficient for skills and several short segments are easier to deal with than one long continuous shot.

Getting Video Off - from the camera roll send email to individual email accounts if segments are short and there aren't too many.  Alternately, plug the device in to the laptop and import to iPhoto or iMovie. DO NOT upload to a personal Facebook or YouTube account as the account details you enter will stay on the device and the next person to use it will be able to also access your private accounts!

Deleting - Take time at the end of a lesson to make sure all media has been deleted from the camera roll.  Actually have the students show you the camera roll so you can verify that it's empty as you collect the devices back in.

Editing - Making a clip shorter can be done on the iPods, but that's about all you could comfortably do.  If you want to edit directly on the device, iMovie on the iPads is one option.  To do advanced edits (slow-mo, reverse, crop, p-in-p) you'll want to ramp up to iMovie on the MacBook.

Publishing - We have a college Vimeo account that could be used to publish exemplar videos as well as highlighting the best in the eDunia.  Individually, if students have their own personal YouTube or Vimeo accounts they can publish there or they can all use their college Picasa accounts.  Video loaded to these sites can be embeded in Mahara and become part of their ePortfolios.

Show Me The Learning

The Digital Literacy Coaches have put together a site for today's Professional Learning day centred around ways we can demonstrate student and teacher learning.

Please click the link below to access the site.

https://sites.google.com/a/gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg/show-me-the-learning/

5 Fab Ideas for Effective Online Research

Over the past few days, UWCSEA has been lucky enough to have Apple Guru Kathleen Ferenz visit our school. She has been a fabulous resource for me personallyas a Digital Literacy Coach, but also for the groups of teachers she has worked with.

One of Kathleen's many strengths is in Literacy, and she has given us lots of handy hints to do with helping students make sense of online texts, research techniques and some strategies for developing effective research skills.

Many of her ideas come from this great article 'Making Sense of Online Text' which is extremely relevant today, even though it was written in 2004!

 Please know that the following Fab Ideas for Effective Online Research are Kathleen's - I am merely sharing them around.

1. Start with images

The right search words are the keys to unlocking the information you are searching for. Kathleen recommended showing students a photo of the sort of thing they would be searching for online to elicit keywords. By way of example, she showed an image of a volcano, and then asked students to think of the keywords that might describe the image. She then used the words the students gave as a starting point for a search.

2. Narrow search by Reading Level

A neat little addition to the 'more tools' section of the Google search results is the ability to search by reading level. I'm not sure how, but I had missed this gem.

3. Scaffold

Our Grade 6 students have been researching about the UWC movement and the other UWC schools around the world. They worked collaboratively on Google Docs to find information under various categories, with the view to making a Keynote presentation later on.


Although the teachers took care to direct students to retain the URL of their sources etc, the Google Docs quickly became a receptacle for work that had been copied and pasted. Kathleen got the students to set up a table in Pages to help summarize and organise their data. This helped bridge the gap between the 'research' and the Keynote.

Too often, students are not provided with enough scaffolding, and as a result, the finished product lacks a depth of understanding. This scaffold will help our students be more successful in their presentation.

 

4. Summarize & Transform

As part of the scaffolding process, students were asked to summarize their findings into bullet points, which was a great start of course. Where I think Kathleen really raised the bar was when she asked the kids to transform their notes into audio form. The process of transforming written text into a different form (in this case, audio) really made them think about what they had learned, and what was important. It helped put the notes into their own words and moved them away from copying. 

Throughout her time at UWCSEA, Kathleen used the technique of transforming text. Occasionally it was creating/finding an image that represented a particular word, sometimes it was a movie recording, sometimes audio. I will definitely be adding this technique to my research toolbox.

5. Search Stories

How do you assess a student's search skills? When Kathleen asked this question to a group of teachers, it certainly made them stop and think. Typically, the skills of searching and synthesizing are seldom assessed, and instead, the quality of a summative task/presentation becomes the assessment.

 Using screen capture tools (e.g. Quicktime player) or a specially created video tool to help with the process, students can record their screen and show the process they use to search for relevant information. Google calls these 'Search Stories' (see amusing example here).


[Although this post is primarily about researching, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Search Stories could be used as a basis for literacy - developing storylines, uncovering the plot with each new search category, character development...]

 I would like to thank Kathleen for all her support, ideas and above all, her warmth! I hope you find these ideas as useful as we have.


Image credits:
Kathleen Coaching by Keri-Lee Beasley
Volcano Erupting ( BY NC SD ) by kahunapulej
UWCSEA by Keri-Lee Beasley
Singapore map via Google Maps      

Taking attendance for a a class that's not on your timetable.

Occasionally, teachers will be asked to cover for colleagues who can't themselves be there. In these cases, you need to be able to mark attendance for a class that's not on your timetable.  Here's how (thanks to Hemantha Dissanayake for the screen shots).

How to take attandance for another teacher from United World College of SE Asia on Vimeo.