A Glimpse into “A Day in the Life of a Connected Educator”

It started as a normal, fairly mundane school day………

Well connected teachers will  find there are many ways to learn, share and teach, teachable moments arise constantly and interruptions to normal routines may become the norm. Yesterday was one such day, when normal classes were planned and a relaxing night at home anticipated, but….

World Museum Scratch Day Saturday, May 18th

Year 8 students are participating in  the Squares, Circles and Triangles project for the World Museum Project to celebrate World Scratch day. Students take photos of shapes in the real world and add them as a sprite to Scratch, highlighting the shape first and then sharing the whole picture. See an online animated sample.

Circles-Storage tanks for firewood

However, this project is quite challenging and as I am not confident with the programming elements, we had to impulsively skype my wonderful online colleague – Lorraine Leo from Boston, USA to help us in our dilemmas. My laptop webcam shared the screens of students with Lorraine so that she could see what the student was doing, speak to them and help them solve their problems. The lesson time was not long enough. So a sample student project was emailed to Lorraine for further investigation in consultation with Yoshiro Miyata, the creator from Japan.

Mystery Pictures in Excel

Brendah from Sth Africa shared her lesson on learning cell references in MS Excel with grade her 2s with the HLW Skypers Group in the chat area of skype. Joe McNulty of Pennsylvania USA, joined our conversation. Within 6 hours he had shared a google document containing more mystery picture challenges that his year 7/8 students had created for Brendah’s young students. It was on impulse that I decided to use these tasks with my year 3/4 ICT class after lunch. Students were highly engaged colouring in reference cells to reveal the mystery pic. They discovered a house, faces, a flag, a rainbow etc if they followed instructions carefully.

A rainbow in progress

Images of Brendah’s and my students working on the tasks were emailed to Joe who then shared them with his students, resulting in them being even more motivated in creating further tasks. Joe has now put some of these up on his google site.

Home at last!

Enjoying the last remnants of my evening meal, I noticed a message in my HLW Skypers Group popup seeking people to ‘jump’ in and join a hangout with Reinhard  Marx and a class from Germany. The students were about to share their learning about “German Islands and the drinking water situation”.

The group skype request from Reinhard

I joined the hangout on my laptop as our desktop computer has been playing up and fully expected to be ejected from it due to my poor bandwidth. Surprisingly I was able to stay in but not able to use my video, nor see the screen sharing from Germany, but….. I could hear and speak to them. In the hangout were Endang from Western Java, Indonesia and Linlin from Taiwan. With me being from Australia, the foreign participants all came from islands – some small, some large and learnt about islands in Germany.

Students from Germany had prepared Powerpoint slides. Reinhard shared his screen with us via the Ghangout. Groups came forward and spoke to the slides and their pictures in clear English. Linlin and I then spoke about the importance of water, issues where we live and how we conserve it.

A small group shares with us

Next, a skype message came from Endang to see whether I could help her Indonesian students speak English to a native speaker. Two students introduced themselves to me, answered my many questions and then asked me questions. The chat in skype helped ensure that we understood each other reasonably well!

An ordinary day turned into a very exciting one in an amazing global classroom! How was your day?

Reflecting on the Flat Classroom Conference Yokohama, 2013

Reflections on an innovative, pioneering conference –  the Flat Classroom Conference 2013 at Yokohama International School, Japan.

The goal: To provide ‘flatclassroom’ experiences for both physical and virtual conference attendees  across the globe with the innovative use of cutting edge technology.  To truly flatten walls across oceans, hemispheres, time zones etc is largely unchartered territory. Julie Lindsay, co-founder of the Flat Classroom Projects was the co-ordinator of this conference which was held at the Yokohama International School, Japan. Kim Cofino who teaches at this school was one of the conference organisers. Taking IT Global also partnered with this event.

Many would say that this is an impossible goal to achieve, others would not even dream that it could be made possible. Another rather unique feature of this conference was that  both students and teachers attended, learning with and from each other.

Participation: There were 2 levels of virtual participation for teachers and students:-

1. Participation via Virtual Flat Classroom® online spaces via streamed video, wikis, blogging, backchannels, twitter etc. This level of participation is one that has been successfully trialled at other conferences
2. But the next level of participation was the innovative one -participation as a full team member in either the Leadership Workshop or the Student Summit by virtual participants. These participants were to be fully involved via the online spaces (eg the wiki, online documents and other media) with at least some synchronous attendance.

Read more about the virtual level of participation.

To this end, Julie Lindsay worked hard to ensure that the virtual experience was a collaborative, interactive experience and as realistic as possible. Two virtual participant co-ordinators were appointed – Jason Graham from Indonesia and myself from Australia. This required several online meetings in Blackboard Collaborate prior to the conference to discuss tools to be used, how it would all look, enlisting and updating the virtual element. Updates and further conversations were made via google documents

Interest was high in both physical attendance at the conference and virtual participation. There were 17 groups of students and 16 groups of teachers each group having virtual and physical members and comprising of approximately 5 or 6 members.

Participating from my kitchen table.

The tools used for the conference included:

1. Email for prior announcements, updates etc
2. Blackboard Collaborate: used for online organisational meetings, and as a virtual lounge or meeting place during the conference – allows chat, audio, sharing presentations, video etc T
3. Twitter – to share conversations in 140 characters or less  with the hashtag #flatclass2013– gave people a feel for what was happening, used to share links, photos and resources and generally keep the world informed. Hashtag used for searching was #flatclass2013
4. A Backchannel  using backchannel chat– this was the most successful tool for connecting and communicating amongst the virtuals in ‘real time’. It allowed text, the sharing of URLs the chat etc.  Links to or embed codes for flickr, youtube, slideshare, voicethread etc actually embed the media.
5. The ning- for networking, sharing blog posts, uploading photos and for sharing conversations in the chat. Many virtual people used the chat in the ning to find out what they could be involved in or what was happening.
6. Flickr – for sharing photos with the hashtag #flatclass2013
7. Wikispaces – the collaborative webpage of the conference – the program, participant lists, groups, tutorials and final outcomes from the groups were all found here.
8. Etherpad – online notepads were set up for each group of teachers and students. This was tool was chosen as it is not blocked in any country – unlike google apps.
9. Ustream – for live streaming of conference keynotes and final outcomes

Highlights

• Participating in a ‘cutting edge’ conference that has the ability to truly flatten and remove any barriers – including cost, effort, location, time etc
• The virtuals collaborating and creating a video sharing our perspectives of the conference
• Testing and trialling google hangouts as a means of connecting.
• Finding the Blackboard Collaborate room populated on the second morning of the conference. Susan in Japan and her pre-service teacher students from Canada were in there ready to present for the Keynotes. Nerves, excitement and a little anxiety were evident. The chatter was lively, one student used her video to good effect for her linkup and all were able to use this tool to connect and deliver to Japan. This, for me was the best tool for audio, video and interactive connections.
• The degree of interest, the determination of some virtuals to be fully involved and active despite any obstacles etc
• The challenges of time zones and infrastructure

What worked well

• The backchannel and chat in the ning.
• The wiki housing all information
• The live streaming was a great inclusive tool as  virtuals could listen to the keynote presentations synchronously and view the final outcomes. (There were technical glitches at times though.)
• The support and comraderie of the virtual participants.
• Blackboard Collaborate (BbC)was the most stable of the connections. I was at home where bandwidth is poor. Google hangouts, live streaming etc were erratic but BbC was great for video and audio projection.
• Having two virtual co-ordinators. It would be difficult to sit at a computer screen for the full extent of the conference but sharing it with Jason, made it possible for one of us to be on call and duty.
• Julie Lindsay suggested that the virtuals create their own video of what it was like to participate in this manner. This gave the group a sense of purpose and really inspired and motivated us to share and collaborate together. Thanks to  Violet Lindsay for her effort in putting it all together for us.

Challenges

• Although many virtual participants registered, few were keen or had sufficient knowledge to be fully and interactively involved at the highest level. Most were satisfied enough to simply be an online spectator via the live streaming.
• Many virtual participants were ‘lost’ and uncertain of how to fully participate. Their group was often too engrossed with the physical group and did not involve their virtual participants.
• Physical groups were often to busy to be able to take the time to include their virtual participants
• Some groups decided to work with google documents rather than the online collaborative pads which had been set up. This excluded participants from some countries or organisations where google was blocked.
• The live streaming was not active all the time. But it was great when it did work, so could listen to the keynotes and group presentations and understand the ground work being made.
• Intermittent use of twitter by all participants – for me this is a great way to promote and share what is happening at the conference and for virtuals to seek actively seek help and gain links to resources that were shared. Thanks to those who took the time to do this.
• Several registered students found they were involved in other activities once the conference dates approached and were unable to participate at the last moment.
• Lack of familiarity with all or some of the tools used for all levels of participants
• Problems in keeping up with the variety of communication options – backchannel, twitter, chat in ning and particpants in the Blackboard Collaborate room.  People used all these options at times and chose the ones they were most comfortable with and the ones that they were able to access.

Futher notes

The virtuals often found it difficult to know exactly where they should be and what they should be doing. There was a small group of really keen and dedicated virtuals who really wanted to work with their group but the physical group were often too busy, too engrossed or not familiar enough with the tools to involve them fully.  However, it is great to note that one or two teacher groups did work well with the mix of face to face and virtuals. One success story eventuated as they already had a connection attending and made prior communication with them.  Live streaming gives everyone the opportunity to participate in real time or to check the recording, if the time zone was not friendly. The wiki and the ning were available 24/7 for any interested parties to be actively involved.

Suggestions for future Flat Classroom Conferences

• Get started earlier with the virtual component.
• It would be good to have a dedicated physical participant at the conference in charge of social media, updating the virtual co-ordinators re current conference happenings and playing ‘go-between’ physical groups and virtual participants. Ie a Virtual co-ordinator on site as well as several off-site.
• Continue to offer a variety of tools so that people can choose those  they are most comfortable with and the ones that will work on their bandwidth and internet access.
• Create grouping of physical and virtual participants earlier, so they have a chance to connect with members of their group prior to the conference.
• Identify one group member in each teacher or student group (at the conference) to be responsible for tweeting, being active in the back channel  and generally communicating with the virtual members of their particular team etc.
• Make greater use of twitter for updates etc
• Continue to have at least two virtual co-ordinators with the possibility of a third who would be on-site at the conference.
• Keep on working at ‘getting it all right’ as it is a truly amazing experience – to work and learn with others across the globe in synchronous and asynchronous time.
• Consider groups of virtual participants who wish to be highly active in both participation and in achieving outcomes.

Thanks Julie for making this possible and achievable, thanks Jason for being a wonderful virtual colleague and to all who participated at any level. Looking forward to working in a similar capacity again soon!

Were you part of this exciting event? If so what were your reflections? How can we keep on improving the experiences?

Share ‘n Tell on a Global Scale

K is for Koala

Our school’s student leadership team suggested an ‘out of uniform’ day to raise funds for student projects within the school. The theme was “Come dressed in a character that starts with the first letter of your name”. eg My name is Anne so I came dressed as an artist.

During period 4 of that day I had my ICT class with year 3 and 4. As I walked into the room, ready to teach them about the finer and more exciting features of MS Powerpoint, I could help but stop in delight at the gorgeous outfits that they had worn.

This surely provided  a teachable moment. The students wanted to show off their costumes, so I quickly messaged the HLW Skypers Group on skype to seek a ready educator or class to link up with us. Fortunately, Karen Lirenman was online in Canada and was willing to speak to the students, via skype videoconferencing,  as they came up to the web camera to introduce themselves and their character.

This led to working out where Ms Lirenman lived etc and then to the planned task of the day – using MS Powerpoint!  Does it matter that I did not follow my lesson plan? I would always answer no, make the most of every teachable moment and opportunity as these can be the most rewarding for learning. Some skills developed included:- confidence, clear speaking, using the web camera to project image correctly, geography, time zone differences (Karen was still in their yesterday) etc.

Some of the many characters

As dawn broke, the kookaburras laughed…

School captains pay respect

As if to reflect the grateful thanks and the sense of national pride of those who attended the Dawn Anzac Day service at Hawkesdale,  two kookaburras could be heard laughing just as we were about to commence our solemn service.

Anzac Day is a day and time for reflection, to acknowledge those who have fought in wars to defend our country.  According to our Australian War Memorial site

ANZAC Day – 25 April – is probably Australia’s most important national occasion. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as ANZACs, and the pride they took in that name endures to this day.

It is 98 years since the Anzacs landed in Gallipoli. Hawkesdale now has a reflection space as part of its main streetscaping. This is the second year that a Dawn service has been held.  More than 200 people attended. The scout and cub group had a sleepover at the local hall and were in force  as part of the gathering. An ANZAC requiem, Reflection Poem – Ode to the Anzacs by K. K. Linton, an ANZAC prayer, a student reflection and the Ode were read by Hawkesdale P12 College students and members of the Scout group. Wreaths were then laid by community groups and community members. The service finished with the Last Post, a one minute silence and finally the Reveille or Rouse as the flag was raised by the scouts. After our national anthem, the flag was lowered to half mast until lunchtime.

At the end of the service HADDAC (Hawkesdale and District Development Action Committee) offered a sausage in bread, hot drinks and anzac biscuits to those who attended.

Sharing War Stories of our Ancestors

The two classes in action

Our year 6 students linked up virtually with Lismore Primary School (approximately 1 1/4 hours drive away) to share war stories of their great or great great grandparents. As Australia celebrates Anzac Day tomorrow, April 25th, to remember those who fought for our country, this was great use of polycom equipment and  smart boards to be able to connect and share.

The army uniform

Staff from both schools worked with Concetta Gotlieb (@chetty)  of See Share Shape on this project. It involved using the Polycom Videoconferencing equipment and our smart board to share a presentation by Lismore PS.

Innovative use of smartboards and polycom for sharing

Students researched their family’s involvement in previous wars, wrote a report or story to share and then using the web camera shared that story. One of our students brought her great grandfather’s army jacket complete with medals and cloth badges and share that with all. Students from Lismore shared a powerpoint presentation which included video footage of interviews with and ex Russian prisoner of war and his memories. Another Lismore student revealed what it was like to be a civilian during World War 2 with rations etc.

Illustrator uses Polycom to teach drawing

The link up was a direct result of a previous project with See Share Shape when an illustrator, Mark Wilson,  virtually taught  a number of virtual classes how to create drawings to illustrate stories. Mark had illustrated Jackie French’s story on Anzac Day, A Day to Remember

As it looked on smartboard

Creating an educational hashtag

Most of my working life is spent teaching at Hawkesdale P12 College but for one day per week, I also work for Digital Learning, Victorian Department of Education as a Web or Virtual Conference coach helping teachers in to use  Blackboard Collaborate, MS Lync, Skype and Polycom Equipment. There are 4 other coaches appointed to this position.

For some time, we have wanted to keep track of tweets that might mention virtual conferencing in education and learning.  However, we need a hashtag which needs to be unique and short in length. After some discussion, it was decided to use #edvc (educational virtual conferencing).  Education is the main objective so “ed” comes first, then the vc for virtual conferencing. Here is what I did:-

1. thought up a generic hashtag that was broad and global in nature and not confined to any specific organisation
2. checked whether #edvc was already used. Online searches failed to come up with any finds.
3. registered the hashtag with hashtags, tag definitions and twubs
4. sent out a tweet with the hashtag

A tweet displaying the new hashtag

The resultant photo is shared below:-

A student proudly shares her Great Grandfather’s army uniform

If you use twitter and conference virtually with others, it would be great if you could share with this hashtag.

Boston in Lockdown

This was the title of a presentation that a close online colleague of mine, Lorraine Leo and I made collaboratively for the Global Education Conference in 2010. In 2012, we share a presentation entitled Further Adventures of Teaching and Learning Across the Globe.

It is with some surrealness and eerieness that after many of our synchronous and asynchronous linkups, that have included many, many adventures including live linkups during  floods and hurricanes etc experienced by Lorraine and her contacts, that I am now chatting to her in gchat whilst she is in lockdown mode as police move in on capturing the suspects involved in the recent Boston bombings.  Here is some of Lorraine’s conversations.

http://www.wcvb.com/  We are in lockdown… this is how we are keeping updated.  We live in Watertown, but many areas here are affected. It is soooo quiet outside in this neighborhood, but from the news we can see that 10 minutes away there are a lot of people

She discovered that she was in lockdown through an email from another friend in Australia.

I asked Lorraine how she is keeping up to date with the news and she responded that the twitter hashtag #bostonglobe and the news channels including CNN and the Boston Channel are her source of information.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you Lorraine and all who are affected by this tragedy.

Minecraft in Education – Tech Talk Tuesday in Review

Stephen’s maths classroom

Stephen Elford (@EduElfie)  gave us a fascinating insight into his passion for minecraftEDU. He has successfully used minecraft – an online reality game that has captured the attention and engagement of students globally – in the maths/science classroom. See his youtube channel for actual demonstrations Successful application sharing in Blackboard Collaborate enabled participants in real time, or whilst viewing the recording to see the exact nature of this amazing world and its potential for learning. Participants came from Pakistan, USA and Australia.

The teacher controls in minecraftEDU

You can watch this fabulous presentation by clicking on the link to the recording below or watching the video version at video version of this session on blipTV which Peggy George of Classroom2.0LIVE has created for us. Thanks Peggy!

Educationalists can join the google group on minecraft Do you have sites to share or networks to join?

An essential online profile

My incomplete edmodo profile!

This note came to me from Vivienne Tucker, the moderator of an edmodo group in education.

I am always happy to have new teachers join our group. However, I have become very wary of accepting requests to join if the teacher profile is completely empty. If you know of teachers wanting to join, I really need a little information in the profile, so as to be sure it is a bona fide teacher, and not a student posing as a teacher. There has been a little trouble with this in some groups. I have quite a few requests from teachers with profiles which are completely empty. Cheers

This is also true of me when accepting contacts in skype or twitter, unless the person has added a note to explain what their interest and role is in education, I do not accept them. The balance is between transparency  and sharing too much personal information.

Why do’t people maintain an adequate profile on online sites:-

• complete newbie and do not know how to complete their profile or
• feel cyber insecure and do not wish to divulge too much about themselves but then risk the problems of not being accepted into some wonderful communities and networks.
• do not understand the significance of having an online profile and/or the potential networking that can evolve.
• time poor – hurriedly register for recommended sites and forget to fully complete the profile

Where to edit a profile!

It is essential to have a good profile (or digital id/badge), an online site or public web presence, eg a blog, a wiki, a personal webpage, a twitter id and a consistent avatar in this world of emerging technology. Potential connectees have somewhere to learn more about you, understand what you are passionate about or interested in and make and maintain connections. Online business cards are an option - about.me, flavorsme (See Jess McCulloch flavorsme) etc

Why be connected?-

• share conversations/learn from and with each other
• stay up to date with trends, grab new ideas
• get help with issues/problems NOW!
• enjoy Professional Development 24/7
• supportive friendship group
• be part of  a “global, networked brain”

A profile should share or feature

• online sites eg blogs, websites etc
• current position or interest in education (if an educator)
• twitter handle, linked in profiles
• Passions and interests

Check out some sites to find where your profile may be found online – peekyou, tagwalk  Do you know of others? What can you share? Ensure that your blog or online space has an ‘About Me’ page or widget.

What would you add to the importance of an online profile? Hmm… that reminds me that I must complete my edmodo profile!

Tech Talk Tuesday: Minecraft in Learning

The makings of a great shelter

When: Tuesday, March 26th from 4-5pm, Melbourne (gmt+11) Check timeanddate for your time and day.

About this session: Heard your students talk about the game Minecraft? Want to know what it is all about? How about a version created by teachers for teachers? MinecraftEdu is exactly this, it is a version of the smash hit indie game Minecraft with added features that enable you to easily leverage the open sandbox nature of the game for education. From easy server management that can have you up and running in minutes to in-game student management and powerful build tools that will make creating and running educational activities in your classroom simple. The only limit with MinecraftEdu is your imagination, and that of your students. Come along  to find out more about this fantastic tool and share in the conversations.

About our presenter: Stephen Elford (@EduElfie) is a secondary teacher in Australia, interested in using games to engage students in their learning. Check out Stephen’s blog to read more of his intriguing work with this tool.

Link to the Recording Have you used minecraft in the classroom? Have you talked about minecraft with your students?

Stephen’s Maths Classroom