Thinglink

Thinglink is a great way to engage your children with information your delivering or tasks they need to complete. After tweeting about it tonight and being asked a few questions I decided to put this together.

I hope it helps.

New class = new learning

We've reached the inevitable end of another school year and although I have accomplished many things this year, my teacherbrain has been in overdrive thinking about next year. Today I got to start implementing these ideas when we had Meet the Teacher, particularly some ideas revolving around getting to know your class.

In trundled 25 of my 30 children full of wonder, intrigue, apprehension and no doubt some worries. 

My first two attempts (in previous years) at this were about laying down expectations, the culture of the class and getting to know some names. This year I wanted to lay the foundations for getting to know them but first I outlined several of my passions (ICT, reading, art & sport). They reciprocated through a post it note - 25 little jewels that tell me something they wanted to share about their likes.

What a treasure trove! 

Nearly half of this class love Minecraft, I have been quite curious about integrating Minecraft in the

classroom but this year I only had 2-3 kids who were avid participants. The first question my new class asked me as I expressed delight at this finding, "Could you please set up a Minecraft server for the classroom?".  In order to leverage this passion, I have to up skill but what an exciting prospect. Writing, reading, art, maths & reading will all be able to piggyback on this finding.

Lego also featured among the likes, similar to Minecraft there are 1000s of ways that a teacher can utilise this.

I was also pleased to hear that some of the kids love to read, most importantly, they saw the book collection in my room and oohed & ahhed. One child's enthusiasm was especially important. I'll need to work hard to keep her engaged before she becomes enraged so hearing that she loves reading was a small victory. I've been reading Donalyn Miller's "The Book Whisperer" lately, so have been reflecting constantly on my reading programme and wonder if she became an underground reader in her previous class. Another year means a fresh start.

Lots of other things were divulged in the PostIts, none of it is earth shattering but I now have 25 of my class each showing me a way to personalise or differentiate their learning. I've got a class that includes children who like play dough, chess, art, role playing games, spiders, swimming and many others.

Next year I'll have a new class and the learning journey will continue, when my new class returned to their old rooms I was the one left full of wonder, intrigue, apprehension and worry.

Engagement, ICT & Social Media

One of my boys finds it difficult to write & read at National Standard level, I'm working my butt off to help him and its not for lack of motivation on his behalf. All year he has loved being able to interact with the ICT tools available to him, he'll tweet, blog & comment his way through a day. However, his work is generally facilitated by myself or  children in the class.

Today, he comes to me during Art (not his favourite subject at any time) and asked if he could go on the class blog to read, of course I allow him. Shortly after, he asks if he can show me something because he wants to do this for our class blog. I was looking at a St George School blog and a post announcing their Class Dojo points winner. We went into the Blogger dashboard to look at putting a Class Dojo icon & some text together to announce our points winner, but we didn't achieve the result either of us were after. So I suggested a Voki, the result below is pretty good.



I told him that he ought to tweet what he'd just done, he was quickly on the twitter account and contemplating what he'd do for a hashtag (i.e., planning - text features, audience, ideas). He quickly put together a tweet, asked me whether 'Just' was a j or g then spelled the rest and spelled fortnight without a second though. Now this isn't all his work, when writing 'voki' I told him to put the @ sign which of course gave us their @officialvoki handle, we did the same for @classdojo. "Can I copy the blog address?" and I'm beaming with pride. I gave him the hashtag but still...

Straight after lunch he asked if he could jump on Twitter again and sent a 2nd tweet without any help.

I accept these aren't full Level 3 texts, but walking is considered a safe way to learn to run. He's engaged, finding a way to communicate, interact and is having fun while he's at it.  The difficult part is moving him from here to somewhere nearer to where him Mum and I would love him to be. Clearly, using ICT is a large factor in this planning. I have a plan to use Storify to curate a text, we'll be able to work on sequencing, planning, & many other surface & deeper features.

I'm sharing because I have had a victory and I know that there will be many accidents in this learning journey but we're both having some fun on the way.

Interestingly, after lunch he gave me a note to say thank you, the writing & handwriting was all rather sketchy, demonstrating that for some the computer is a better tool for learning to write. Maybe he should have tweeted ;-)

Thinglink

My class are in the midst of ICT week and have been creating posters about biosecurity risks. As they finish these posters I have been moving them to creating a ThingLink image. Rather than explain what this is, take a look at Sara's example:
 

Sara was the first of my class to have venture onto this during the week and quickly became the class expert, both modelling what they could do as well as trouble shooting for a few students.

Previously, I had used a Thinglink image to show them some work earlier in the year, this introduced the concept and aroused some curiosity. But the following steps were used to help the children create their own.

Steps:

1. The first person who finished the poster got to be first to create on Thinglink, I would demonstrate only once to an individual and allow them to become the expert. As each child finished they were first directed to Sara's work to see what she was doing.
2. I got the class to sign in using their class twitter account to avoid further password confusion.
3. Allow them to find an image to use as the main image.
4. Explore the internet to find images, information and video to embed as tags.
5. Share to class blog/individual blog using an embed code.

I recommend that you use this tool in your class, it could be a great way to have children explore and share their understanding of many subjects especially the sciences. But I'd love to take an illustration or piece of text from a reading book and have the children use this to share their understanding. As a tool it is useful for allowing students to share their voice and it also comes as an App for the iPad/iPhone.

EduIgnite Presentation

ICT in teacher training

I sat in two meetings yesterday where there were vastly different attitudes to Twitter. In one it was seen as a valued tool in the classroom that can advance learning, in the other there was a bit more dissonance. This divide is something I've been contemplating lately as I push my own learning via my online PLN, my classroom through various online platforms and my own PD.

My pre-service was completed at Auckland Uni on the 1 year course and I was surprised that ICT hardly featured, we had some exposure to Moodle and Eportfolios but neither with our own teaching in mind. Fortunately, I was lucky to have a placement in 1 school where ICT was pushed and saw the use of Scratch and GIMP in a Y5/6 class. But why do teacher trainees have to rely on luck? Clearly, time is a factor when selecting teaching material for pre-service and I value all of the information provided. However, I'm not convinced that it adequately prepares the new teacher for a world where many teacher vacancies include ICT in their requirements.

Fastforward to now (PRT 18 months in), I am using Twitter for all sorts of information sharing, blogging with my class and as a teacher, regularly use my iPhone as a tool with the kids and collaborate with teachers in other schools with enthusiasm. This week I have provided support to a teacher looking to get on Twitter (@htauahns), have been asked by my Mentor Teacher to help with his ICT development and had another experienced teacher quip that she'll give Twitter a go when she has plenty of time for learning. So I think the dissonance is receding, I just have to keep on tweeting!

But what about those in pre-service now? We have some student teachers at the moment, I've shared ideas with them and explained several tools including Popplet, Explain Everything and modelled creating a classroom expert. I'm feeling even more optimistic after seeing that Auckland Uni is making progress in the ICT area for teacher training also.

Tweeps communicate both during formal PD settings and informally with ideas, strategies, feedback and resources. With the enthusiasm that abounds on Twitter maybe ICT doesn't require focus in teacher training, but it sure would have made my time far more engaging!

Clone me

As a beginning teacher I'm still developing all my systems, both for classroom management and for planning. This week I used a tool that is going to help with both.

Week 2 ended with Room 1 running the assembly for Henderson North School, the class thought it would be cool to use a Voki for some of the assembly, I agreed.  After the kids had set up the voki for assembly, a child suggested "Mr Walker, you could use that for giving us instruction" and so I was set onto my "Clone Me" journey. I knew this can be done with Voki but simply haven't used it.

Week 3 saw Room 1 scheduled for ICT week and I was planning on creating movies using iMovies and one of my boys would be a class expert to support the children while I was busy. However, I also wanted him to have a task he could sink his teeth into and do some learning also. I was interested in him doing some screencasting, he thought this was a great idea and found the Screencast.com would give us the tools. My PLN on Twitter allowed me to check this though and as usual I got great support. After a bit of a play, Snagit was the chosen platform.

I made a video over the weekend so that I could see how it works. The class blog now has a Snagit clip explaining how to comment on a post for the parents.

But the real test was for the children, would they respond to instructions using Snagit? My release day was on Wednesday, so l I scanned a language activity for use on the smart board, set it up and after a few takes (much to the amusement of those kids present) had a video already for later in the day. I was in the staffroom next door when my release teacher played the video and I could hear the response, I checked the class soon after. Most agreed this was a fun way to get instructions (even if I had missed something out).

I know how to clone myself, this is an important lesson for a BT, I have a tool that can create more 'time' for students and therefore learning. When my kids become more used to my SnagitMe I hope to create some videos that they can access themselves for mini lessons with ICT, writing, maths and reading. I just have to work out the best way for hosting them!

Sustainable ICT practices in the classroom

I'm a sucker for punishment! This is my 2nd year of being a BT and in my wisdom I decided that I was going to start a class blog and Twitter account (@rm1hns). I recognised that these were both effective tools for connecting the class with the rest of the world and providing an audience for their work (amongst many other benefits). But let's face it there's plenty of other things that a BT could be doing but you'll struggle to convince me to not take on too much.

I enjoyed the learning that I encountered getting these things going and the class have loved the excitement that this has brought to the classroom. However, I was doing a lot of the work and hence the late term 1 entrance of my ICT-challenged mentor teacher (he admits this himself and claims that he and computers are allergic to each other!!!). He'd listened to my advocacy of the blog and resulting student interest for most of the term but he had some wisdom (that's what he's for!), what was going to happen next year when my year 5s went into his or someone else's room where blogging wasn't occurring? Cue scream! He needs to learn to blog but most importantly my student's need to be taking more ownership, the latter is not rocket science but my own enthusiasm was going to provide my downfall.

My class need to be take more of an active role in the blog's production rather than just producing the work for it. Furthermore, they're better at it than me!

In the last week of term I introduced a handful of room 1 to the blogger dashboard and posting things. The following day, the class had been through two voki's (discussed here) I spent my holidays playing with iMotion, a timelapse photography app and spent a good deal of time puddling about to get the backing track onto the video and the result is visible here in the Tae Kwan Do video.

Compare this with one student's efforts, he got told that he could take a timelapse of Jump Jam and I showed him how. By the end of 1 block, he had a far better product all ready to go (bar the sharing). His video is below also, unfortunately we realised after that the backlighting is hopeless but next time... He has now assisted one other student to produce their own.



I'll be introducing their own blogs to them very soon, I can't wait to see what they teach me and facilitating their efforts will be invigorating and a challenge. I don't think there will be an issue with the sustainability of blogging, at least not with my students, but my mentor teacher...

Ownership, voice, the Student Teacher and the BT...

Today's plan for our ICT block was to introduce the class to Google Docs, while I would spend some time with a select group of motivated and responsible students scaffolding them towards being authors on the class blog. The best laid plans...

I had got the class logged into Google and they were happy exploring its collaborative nature. Some were enjoying writing stories together, whilst others were appreciating the chance to do free writing and investigate the platform. Class experts were dealing with the simple problems giving me more time for the blogging group, I thought I was doing a good job. Engaged, motivated and "free" choice, all ticked.

The blogging group got into the dashboard of blogger and we discussed creating a new post, they wrote a title, argued, recrafted, refined, started over and procrastinated their way to an agreement on a title. I'd lost them already, they switching off completely when I said that we should concentrate on a text only post and worry about images, video [and all the exciting stuff] later.

About this time, my principal entered to suggest that I invite the student teacher into my room to have a look at ICT. "Sure, that's a great idea! Tell her to come on over and spend the afternoon". Earlier in the day we'd had our first look at one of our quad-blogging buddies and on their front page they have a Voki welcoming readers. So right about now, I've got all the ingredients I planned on plus a few more, but what will be the outcome?

Cue, student teacher. We had a discussion about twitter [she's a non-user!], blogging and google docs. I asked the class to tell her why we use Twitter. Fantastic responses were elicited with no prompting, I imagined my mentor teacher, team leader, parents and ERO all handing out plaudits for the wonderful job I was doing.

Possibly sensing my moment of glory, the blogging team asked if they could create a Voki, so I let them. They instantly re-engaged, had created their avatar in next to no time and had a ball doing it. The teaching moment was assisting them to use HTML code to embed it on the blog Class Blog and Avatar.  So what if its not exactly what I'd planned , but they had expressed their creativity, learned and had fun. They had also taught me some valuable lessons on ownership of the blog and expressing their voice. We've negotiated that their Voki can stay up for 24 hours so they can show their buddies and family, after which we'll create one for the whole class. (I'm now thinking that it might become a changing feature).

I'm not sure what the student teacher thought, but later she was asking about teacher-led blogs and student voice. I love creating the class blog, it's definitely a large workload for a BT but they love seeing their work on it, I'm looking forward to the chaos, innovation and voice that I'm going to see as this journey continues.