Modelling failure and learning

I recently ran a workshop with some children to assist them on reflecting, in talking about photos and their purpose within reflection I mentioned Thinglink. These learners appeared interested, so I quickly showed them the front page and their interest grew, so I resolved to introduce them this afternoon. 10 children attended the workshop at 1.40pm today, with no inkling of the disaster that would evolve in front of them.

I've used Thinglink with previous classes and figured that as long I knew where this was, today's session would be fine. Hence, I too wandered into my own workshop feeling sure of myself.

Thinglink generated email and passwords.

I'm using a free education account on Thinglink, this entitles me to have students loaded into a class channel using either a Thinglink generated email address and password or students can create accounts using a special code, their own email address (we are a GAFE school) and password. For whatever reasonI decided to pursue the former, within a very short space of time the learners were resplendent in a chorus of "Reid, Reid, Reid". It was reminiscent of a great 'Finding Nemo' scene and a signal that I was heading down a slippery path. They were getting mixed up between their own gmail addresses, different passwords and the Thinglink email. 

Rather than dig myself deeper, a feat I didn't think would be appreciated by the students or the observers visiting HPPS today, I decided retreat was a better option. 

I explained to the group "I knew there were two options for creating student accounts on Thinglink and I should have chosen the other option. Their calls for help signalled the first path wasn't working and I was getting into a learning pit. We need to stop and take the other path".

"We teachers also make mistakes, but it is getting out of the pit that helps us grow. If anyone feels comfortable with this job, you could go to our Learner Profile statements and pick one that you think I need to work on based on this."

A student returned with this:

When asked where I sat on this continuum, she replied that I needed more support! She was right on the money.

With some great conversation to supplement our learning, I had all the students return to the login screen to use the Class Code (right top. But the damage had already been done, the students were still confused and tried using the original Thinglink passwords with the new code, or combinations of Thinglink and their own details. Of course these combinations returned error messages similar to the picture (right below). The chorus started again and I realised I'd just run a complete disaster with very little effort. 

I gave up on the Thinglink aspect of the lesson. There was a bigger lesson occurring.

"Can everyone close their screens please. You are doing everything right but are getting error messages, it is like when a cook follows the recipe but something goes wrong.

We have two options. We can quit, go to our next jobs and forget this ever happened. Or, you can head off to your next jobs and I promise to go away and do some testing so that I can run this lesson again next week. We need to learn from our mistakes so that we can move forward in our learning. What should we do?"

Reassuringly, they all wanted to have another go.

I asked "Have you ever made mistakes and then thought it was easier to give up?"

Unsurprisingly, many of them silently nodded.

I know of many ways that I can make this lesson more successful and deliberate (within the Thinglink aspect).

1. Run the tests myself using a dummy email. √
2. Test with one student before running the full lesson.
3. Write a step by step guide for logging on using the best method. Alternatively, a video would be quite useful also.

I'm hoping that the real lesson was in the workshops failure and not its success. We ask our students to reflect on their learning, its only fair that I write this reflection in acknowledgement of my own.

Rethinking a Twitter disaster

Picture a classroom with 14-15 devices with children busy taking part in a chat session with over 1200 tweets and 25 classes participating. Add to it their classroom teacher who is moderating the session, its the last 10-15 minutes of the day so the class is starting to pack up and those who have been in another part of the school are filtering in excitedly. Sounds like chaos! This is the situation I found myself in last Thursday as my colleague entered the room to expose a "F-bomb" that had just been launched by my class in the chat session. I scrolled to the top and there it was for all to see, lobbed casually into cyberspace with no other tweet content so the intent and meaning of the message were in plain sight.

With devices shut down and class packed I let my them know I was disappointed and angry. They left school knowing they weren't to bring devices the following day as a trust issue had arisen. I had quickly been able to rule out several kids based on duties or responsibilities that had them out of the classroom, but this still left a large pool of students.

After school I spoke with my colleague, our IT support and the DP. Removing devices, a renewed focus on digital safety and mention of hunting for the IP address would all be used to attempt to find the culprit. The kids had been in peers, there was hope that 1 would come forward. Talking with Stephen Baker, another Kidsedchatnz coordinator, he supported the tactics but didn't envy the position.

The next day, they were asked to write apology letters and discuss digital safety. No further progress was made as to a culprit. It's fair to say that I was bitterly disappointed for both Kidsedchatnz, the classes exposed to this, the innocent parties in the room and our school. We had misrepresented our class, school and enthusiasm for BYOD and eLearning.

That weekend as I reflected I decided that I should apologise to them. I had partly contributed to this situation through trying to do too much. Over time we had been using more & more devices during a chat session. By having so many participating it made it more difficult to monitor what each group was doing, it only took 1 child to push the limits. A lot of thought perhaps over 1 word, a word that is all over our television screens, but our RTC require us to keep our students safe. I owed my students and others participating honest reflection of my own role in this.

Monday morning I spoke to the class about my role in this and apologised but stressed that I was still disappointed. We followed this up by investigating the power of the internet by focussing on what takes place in 1 minute and then sent out a simple message to investigate the reach of just 1 tweet. We have have discussed Digital Safety many times, but this lesson appeared to really resonate.

When the class had a look Tuesday afternoon, the potential viewers based on 21 Retweets was between 25 - 35,000 followers. They were blown away by the magnitude and 2 astute children likened the spread of a tweet to that of a virus.

Tuesday night I reflected on 2 days of device-free learning that had gone very well with plenty of engagement, choice, learning and student voice, I reached a shocking conclusion. I am convinced that I had moved away from effective use of the devices! However, the shift was so incremental that I hadn't noticed and it was only a complete removal of devices that highlighted this. This begs a question that I can not answer fully right now and brings me to the purpose of this post. What are the symptoms of ineffective use of technology that I should have noticed?

Clues that I have identified in my reflection:

• A group of students that were seeking every opportunity to complete a learning task, but still not completing it.
• Angst & disagreement between group members while completing tasks.
• Tasks that were getting little to no feedback/forward or teacher support.
• The tweet & inappropriate language suggests that they weren't being supervised or that I ought to have paired the students more effectively.

When recorded like this above, it would seem blindingly obvious, but each & every incident has taken place over several weeks and I have treated any issues on their face value rather than looking at any overall trends.

There is plenty of material discussing the point that eLearning should have the "e" removed, it is still effective pedagogy that drives the use of technology. I'm not a 'tool driven' user of technology and have experienced much success with technology so I am a little frustrated by this realisation. I'd appreciate some feedback on other indicators of ineffective use of technology, especially anything going beyond the 'why' a certain tool is being used.

#Edchatnz - so what?

The night before the #Edchatnz conference I was a ball of energy, with a hint of nerves! I was presenting for Kidsedchatnz and my brain was racing as I wondered what the next two days would bring. Last night was a complete contrast, the realisation that Friday would be 1 week on from was quite a comedown, there would be no F2F with my PLN no, no passionate learners sharing their knowledge, no hanging out with some of the most amazing teachers.

We all knew that taking this conference home , continuing the revolution, was a large task. After 4 days, I know I've achieved a lot.

I've purchased "Once Upon A Time". This is a storytelling game recommended by @gingamusings. We were investigating narrative storywriting, its been a tad silo but I'd been using context to make it engaging with lots of minecraft, Call of Duty, visual prompts from Write About This on Pinterest and plenty of free choice. But this week, we've added "Once Upon A Time" to the mix, as well as StoryCubes (Verbs) and Scrabble.

• Why? Oral Language is the foundation of story telling, some of my kids need help just getting their story out, others need to work on the flow/structure and for some just thinking about vocab and spelling is a big step. Its been full of "buzz" this week.

Collaborative writing: Having played "Once Upon A Time", 3 of my girls wrote a collaborative recount of their experience on GoogleDocs. We also took part in a small collaborative task started by @PascalDresse a round robin story using GoogleDocs, 10 classes writing 1 sentence each. I've posted more about this elsewhere.

• Why? The girls wanted to share something about Once Upon A Time and they asked - I knew they would be writing, in terms of Key Competencies alone I was happy with this. 10 Sentence story children were all chosen as they have problems with stories flowing.

Choice: We had the computers for two sessions, 1 each for Maths & literacy. During Maths I took a risk with the blank canvas & conveyed that to the children. I asked each of them to write their learning outcome for the lesson, they shared this with me through Socrative where I was able to download the spreadsheet of responses. Each child then attempted to learn using their own methods with the computer, I had kids visiting lots of sites for strong math games (with their goals in mind), kids on Khan Academy and other YouTube videos. All were engaged and most confessed they had actually made progress towards their learning goal. The literacy session was much the same, children spent their time blogging, publishing, commenting, creating & sharing.

• Why? This was a great chance to try the blank canvas for me but for the kids I know that everyone of them has different learning needs in maths, this was a chance to personalise the learning. I viewed it as a success.

Sharing HookEd.com: @CaroBush laughed at my gobsmacked look as Pam Hook shared with us during Edchatnz. I've shown several people the Rubric Generators on Pam's site HookEd.com they've given me the same look.

• Why? Because some of our mapping meetings have tedious merry-go-round conversations about what skill or verb should be included because some are too hard for different levels. SOLO and the rubric generators makes this argument go away!

Our principal was talking about digital learning, professional development and shifting your thinking. A great discussion and was supplemented with a model outlining reluctance through to innovators. I was asked to add my thoughts. I talked about three things: What, How, & Why. It's easy to find a new toy/gadget/app to play with but that it is understanding Why you have included it in your learning experience that is the real question.

• Why? It should be central to your thinking in all planning. Why does the student need this tool, this experience, what will be the outcome for their learning.

I've purchased the book Key Competencies the first book recommended by @Edubookchatnz which was launched at #Edchatnz, I didn't go to the session but I am definitely keen to take part in this awesome journey. They're recommending professional reading and providing a chat to share the learning, consider it an online book club for teacher twitter geeks like me.

• Why? Because professional reading is an important method to improve my teaching & professional practice.

Friday afternoon, @MrRuddtheTeachr and I are providing some PD on collaboration, connection & constant learning (aka TWITTER). I am a huge advocate of Twitter as a teacher & in the class and we also have 5-6 who are on Twitter but not very active, some are eggs because they don't have profiles & some chicks as they're not very active tweeters. But most are real eggs, they're not even on twitter. Its time for some to change that.

• Why? Connection, collaboration, constant learning, PLN, need I go on?

1 week on, I'm feeling pretty relaxed about continuing the revolution and most importantly that I've truly engaged with the Professional Development I got at #Edchatnz

First Aid Training - Holiday PD

I spent my last day of the term 2 holidays doing professional development, not a problem in itself, but it does highlight some questions I have.

The PD was workplace first aid training and was organised by our health & safety guru, volunteer fireman and fellow year 5 & 6 teacher @Generalrudd. The course, run by Ambulance EMT, was the second he'd organised in my time at HNS, although the first was for the year 5/6 kids. This wasn't just teachers-only PD, it was set up as school-wide so all support staff were also required for the last day. I've ready many posts and plenty of tweets about the variety of professional development and whether school-wide is always appropriate and even this had some staff not wanting to give up the day or unwilling to participate.

Our training involved rescue breathing, CPR, defibrillator, bandaging, recovery position, epi pens and most of the basics you would expect from this type of course. As a school we're investigating purchasing a defibrillator, before I started at HNS a staff member had heart attack and it was through the knowledge and skills of staff that this person survived so one can understand the schools thinking.

My questions though are as follows:

Am I prepared skillwise to help a child with a significant injury?
Yesterday was the third time I have completed some first-aid training, not once have I ever completed a refresher or renewal course so the first two certificates lapsed well before I became a teacher. Here I am again having completed the training and in a better position to help others, especially with some of the child-focussed learning we did yesterday. I'm incredibly fortunate, @Generalrudd is far more trained and experienced in delivering first aid but this is a double-edged sword for a complete novice like myself. I would hate to panic or freeze if I ever got into a situation where these skills were needed so without testing myself I will never know.

In my time at HNS we've had a few broken bones and dislocations, none while I've been on duty so I had no involvement but last year a student did have a bad accident while my class were outside. Then, we deferred to @Generalrudd, just as I would now although I feel I'm in a better position to assist him. This has to be a good thing.

The double edge of this sword is that I know that it is unlikely that any school I move to in the future will have someone as trained (first aid / volunteer fireman) as my colleague, placing all pressure squarely back on my shoulders.

How do other schools approach first-aid and first-aid training?
The only other schools I have experience with were on my three practicums, none of these schools had first aid training while I was there. I also know that they didn't expect all staff to have first aid training. But what about other schools? I know one school that a golfing buddy is at has regular school-wide training facilitated by St. Johns.

But first aid training doesn't seem to be top of mind, I'd love to have people share with me the approach taken at their school.

Should first aid training be a basic requirement for all teachers?
We include the safety of our students as an absolute imperative in our job, we have all sorts of systems to cope with any number of interventions but how come we don't include first aid training as a basic requirement? I know the cost is significant to have all staff trained, but surely having only a few staff trained at every school is a rather haphazard approach also. Clearly, we can't be trained for every student need as this list would be quite large (without even worrying about first aid training). I'm just a little surprised that this isn't at the heart of caring for our students.

I fully appreciate that we have so many responsibilities, requirements and commitments in our ever-growing job description but having undertaken first aid training I felt the need to air my thoughts. Feel free to disagree, laugh this off as an inexperienced viewpoint or simply ignore...