Creating Announcements for Your Grade Level Page (HoG)

Each grade has been set up with a grade level page accessible from the school website (www.uwcsea.edu.sg).

1.  Log in to the school website and click on the East Learning (Note: The left hand side of the icon)

2. Select Infant or Junior as needed

3. Select your grade level

4. This will take you to your grade level page which the parents of your students will see. (Here is an example from grade 3)

5. In the sidebar on the left there are links to information about your grade (Academics, Activities, Outdoor education, Personal and Social Education, Service and Announcements).

The "Announcements" link is only available to head of grades and will not be visible to other teachers when they log in to this page.

6. The announcement page is replacing the ebrief page. To create a new announcement, click on the Announcements on the left hand side.

7. This will take you to a page where you would write any news that is relevant to the entire grade level.

8. Click on the New Post button to create a new post.

9. Change the Title of the post from "Untitled Post" week and date of your post (eg. Week 1 - August 19-23)

 10. Write what you would like to share with the parents in the space below your title.

11. If you would like to add pictures into your post, put your cursor where you would like to put your picture and select Insert > Image from the menu bar.

12. Click on Choose File.

13. Find your image and select Open.

14. Another dialogue box will open. Click on the picture so it is highlighted and select Ok.

15. The image may display in your post as a different size than you would like it to be. 

To change the size, locate the popover display bar. To the right of the word "Image" you have options to place your image left, center or right of your page. 

Beside that you can select the size of the image as small (S), medium (M) or large (L). Select the size that you would like for your post.

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.

Getting Started With Your iPad

The Early Results of an iPad Classroom

Initial Steps to Get Your iPad Ready

1. Accessing Your Personal and School Gmail

2. Install Google Drive and Dropbox

Installing and using Google Drive and Dropbox makes getting creations (photos, videos, iBooks etc) off your ipad easier. You can set them up using your school Gmail account, a personal Gmail account, or if you think you may get the students to use the apps you might want to think about setting up a generic class Gmail account.

Dropbox

Google Drive

3.  Mirroring on the Classroom Whiteboard

We have some dongles that will allow you to hook your iPad up to your computer in order to show your screen on the IWB. 

BUT a much more efficient way to do this is to use Reflector (You will need to have the app installed on your computer by IT Support) Here is a short video that explains how to mirror your iPad on your whiteboard.

4. Organization Is the Key

As you add apps to your iPad you may like to consider using folders to keep them all organized.  Here are two a blog posts, one by K2 Enterprises and one by About.com, that explain the steps to creating folders. 

Tips and Tricks

We will work through some of these tips - if you have anything else that you have found useful when using the iPad join in and tell us:

• Closing Apps
• Switching between Apps
• Double tap
• Siri
• Lock / Unlock 
• Photos
• Videos

Other Resources

Kathy Schrock's iPads4Teaching

Blog Posts by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

Blog Posts by Dana Watts

Learning with games, a visit to the 3DHive

I had a chance to spend an afternoon with developers and researchers from Playware Studios, a Singapore based company that includes UWCSEA Dover alumna Akshay Maliwal as Head of Strategy.

I really enjoyed the experience for a few reasons:

-The team that went included myself (Digital Literacy Coach), the High School Principal, and a Middle School Humanities teacher. Having the multiple perspectives was really powerful as each of saw the presentation slightly differently.

 -I was expecting to go in for a product demo, but was pleasantly surprised when we spent the first hour entirely discussing the role of games in learning and working on a concept for our own game. It was especially nice having the perspective and guidance of Richard Sandford to take us into the mindset of developing and using games for learning.

Here's a look at 3DHive, a game development environment from Playware Studios.




Students can make games, not just play them.  

We had quite a lot of debate on the value of these games for learning. Is this the most efficient way to learn? Do teachers have the time to make them? Do students learn the intended concepts? All of these were good questions raised by colleagues, and they're all assuming that games would just be played by students. I realized that I was thinking about the value of games not just from the perspective of the student as player in a game created by teachers, rather I was thinking of the students designing and building games to show their understanding.

The demo game we played illustrated energy flow in the ecosystem and predator-prey dynamics as it pitted a group of lions against a herd of zebras. To build a game like this that accurately models the dynamics of grassland ecosystem, you've got to have a solid understanding of the Ecology and systems-thinking ability. Students tasked with building such a game would have to learn the Ecology in order to build a game that works like a real ecosystem. Game designers also have to consider the experience of the players which links strongly with our goal of practicing metacognition by thinking about the thought process, emotions, and likely actions of the players as they play your game.

The 3DHive software appears simple enough for anybody to pick up and create a simple game. You build your world, add characters and assign attributes to your game. I'm quite confident that a majority of our students 9 and older could create a game to show their understanding.

Letting go, students control their learning.

A big tension for people considering doing something like this, incorporating games in learning, is that you have to be prepared to hand over control of the learning to the students and you don't know exactly how the game is going to end up.
It's most comfortable when we deliver known content in a well-practiced way that takes a pre-determined amount of time followed by an assessment that gives results that fit a normal distribution.

Using games for learning allows for nuanced conversation between players along with the teacher. These conversations and analysis of the game are where the deep learning occurs, not so much during the play.  This is really no different than during a traditional lesson. Students need opportunities consolidate their learning after a series of activities.
I really liked how the software allows the teacher to control aspects of the game during play including a pause button where you can draw attention back from the game and have mini debrief conversations where students analyze play and game dynamics and even have peer-team meetings to plan strategy. Once the games ends, the teacher has access to analytics including video replay of the game that can be used to make points linking back to the learning objectives.

It's time we take a serious look at playing to learn and how video games fit in our instructional ecosystem. I really like the possibilities of using 3DHive, Portal 2 and Minecraft worlds built by students because they demonstrate their understanding clearly based on how well the game is designed.

What other game environments should we consider for learning?