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.

Lorraine from USA (in laptop) virtually teaches Amy how to solve her problem with Scratch

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?

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

Localization of Blog Posts

Armenian translation of a post on skype

Several years ago, I wrote a post Using Skype in the Classroom.  This is still one of my favourite tools for connecting and collaborating.

Several months ago, I received a request from Leyli who described herself as

a student at the Department of Foreign Languages and at the same time a volunteer at an organization named “Translation for Education”. I love surfing on the Internet and being informed about the latest happenings around me. Unfortunately, most of my fellow citizens don’t know English, so that makes them feel somehow excluded from all this variety of useful info from the Internet.That was the reason that made me decide to start being a volunteer at such an NGO. So I created a blog, where I post translations of some of the texts that really caught my attention. Sometimes it’s a simple description of some organization, and sometimes it might be a narrowly specialized scientific article.

You can read the Armenian translation here. I was intrigued to read that this is called localizing online content.  I had to google where Armenia was, so thank you, Leyli for adding to my world geography.

Look local Go global!

People often ask where they can find global connections. Too often we forget to look within our own local and school community. Unfortunately, our school is isolated geographically and culturally, but many other teachers could look for:-

1.  parents of students from other cultures or find relatives that may live overseas. They can be keen to share their culture, backgrounds, experiences, food etc with the students. 
2. Major towns and cities will have Chinese, Indian, Thai, Portuese, African, Italian, Greek etc restaurants and shops. These also make a starting point.
3. Students within the school may be overseas on holidays or on an exchange program and that is one that we were able to use,  as one of our year 10 students is over in Canada for 6 months. Emma was keen to connect with her friends back at school via skype and videoconferencing, so this week we set up a connection with four of her friends.

Despite Canada seemingly being similar to our culture, Emma is experiencing so many different things to what she would be back here on the farm. It is snowing there and she has been skiiing, dog sledding, skating on the larges skate rink in the world etc. Her school is bigger, she now lives in a town etc. The sports are different. Tuesday morning this week was Monday evening, Emma’s time.  We used skype. Some of the questions our students asked were thoughtful and reflected their curiousity and a real interest in her life over there. Although they keep in constant touch via facebook, the videoconference brings an intimacy on a higher level. Emma took us on a virtual tour of her Canadian home and into  the snow laden backyard. The girls were also able to ask questions of the family members in Canada.

Here is some of the conversation:

1.  Why aren’t you at school? (Reflected lack of knowledge of time zones)
2. Do you do much homework?
3. What are you doing in maths? – voting procedures
4. What subjects do you do that are different to here?
5. How many students in your class (20-25)
6. Are you still doing drama?
7. What is the weather
8. What is the time?
9. Do you stay with the same family for 6 mths (yes)
10. Does it feel like home? (yes)
11. Describe your house- (3 storeys – basement ground floor and first story)
12. Do you do anything with your friends after school ?
13. What different foods have you had?–(poutin – French fries with gravy and cheese curd.  Bagels for brekkie, beaver tails = cinnamon toast.)
14. Does any one speak French? (French is their second language)
15. Show us your school uniform (Emma’s school has no uniform)
16. Do they have cheer leaders
17. What are the popular winter sports – ice hockey, volleyball and basketball
18. Do you go on camps or work experience (no)
19. Do you have holidays? (Just had one week holiday break – this is first week back. Easter another break. In summer will be 2 months)
20. Do any of your friends have jobs? (Leah has a job and works at a pizza place.)
21. How do you get the snow off the road –( add salt to the roads to make it melt.)
22. Do they have a big back yard? – this question resulted in a virtual tour of the yard
23. Can you show us some money?
24. How hot does it get it Canada?
25. Do you go to the beach? (On the Great Lakes – not the ocean)

A Canadian coin

• Have you videoconferenced back to exchange students or use relatives and connections from the local community to bring textbooks to life?
• Have you brought in any of your local community to give students a global perspective? If so, how?
• Have you taken your students out into a cultural neighbourhood?

Playing Games in Skype

Memory in a bag of objects

Yesterday, I noticed a facebook update from my innovative colleague, Endang Palupi from Indonesia. She was working with a school 6 hours from her home, demonstrating the ‘magic’ of skype in the classroom with them.

This time Endang asked us to use games, singing etc over skype with these students. I wracked my brains (as I am certainly no good with singing) as to what game I could play. Then decided on a memory game. Here is what it looked like:-

1. Collect 10 objects and place them in a bag (eg scissors, newspaper, mug, ruler, dice, flag etc)
2. Display each one, one at a time  to the distant class over skype
3. Say the name of the object
4. Hide the objects back in the bag
5. Students  come up to the webcamera, name each of the 10 objects in the language of the initiating class.
6. Students could then name them in their first language and the other class repeat the name.

Taking the learning further – share the current news from the newspaper  of each school over the webcam, discuss the flags, compare what is in their pencil cases etc. I could have put my mobile phone in and then we discuss favourite technology, favourite use of phones etc

I wondered what other teachers do apart from Mystery Skype, straight question and answer etc. So a public collaborative google document was created for you or others to add ideas to. To ensure you can always retrieve it, bookmark the website or goto share, add your email address in there and it will be approved.

It is hoped that this will become an ongoing rich resource of sharing by teachers wishing to collaborate beyond classroom walls. What ideas do you have for both younger and older students. Please share them with us all.

A Virtual Presentation for our VCE Study Camp

At the beginning of each school year, VCE (year 12) students from across a number of small rural schools, including ours, attend a three day study camp at the University of Ballarat. A last minute plea was made for suggestions of a speaker or workshop for the Business Management class. This is the first year that I am teaching this subject so am inexperienced!

Again the power of a professional network came into play, as I contacted a wonderful colleague, Amanda Ritter who teaches at Toorak College (a private girls’ school) in Melbourne. Each year Amanda’s student gain extremely high results and Amanda is herself well networked, resourced and experienced.  Amanda offered to videoconference in to the students and speak to them virtually from her school. Blackboard Collaborate was the software tool of my choice for the virtual workshop, as students have access to a chat, can see Amanda on video and watch the powerpoint presentation on the virtual whiteboard. Polls can be setup and high interactivity employed. However, this software does not work at their school. So, we agreed to use skype.

Testing skype connection whilst still at school

The Business Management student cohort:-

• 15 students at the camp were studying Business Management 
• students came from 8 different small rural schools
• Students studied the subject under different conditions – some with a face to face teacher, some study virtually with a remote teacher using polycom videoconferencing equipment, several study the subject by distance education (I still call it study by correspondence)

Webcam Introductions

The challenges included how to-

•  ensure that skype would work in a tertiary institution where I had no control or direct contact with lecturers or technicians (it can be blocked in many eductional settings)
•  provide a backchannel or area of chat for the students to interact, ask questions, provide feedback etc
• encourage an ongoing social network for students beyond the camp and through this final school year
• engage students for a 2 hours – the length of the workshop
• project Amanda’s video image up (feedback suggests seeing the presenter is more engaging for students) whilst simultaneously sharing the powerpoint presentation. (I did not have time to print it out in pdf form and photocopy for students). Amanda was unable to share her screen with us in skype.
• contact students after the date when they publicly state they dont use email!
• the lack of time to fully test skype and its potential features for the presentation.
• Give Amanda a clear view of her virtual class (this was difficult as they were in a computer lab and mostly hidden behind monitors whilst taking notes)
• the practicalities of accessing skype at the university and their network
• Camp organising staff organised a University rep to help me setup and ensure we had a username and password.
• created a Todays Meet backchannel for introductions, discussion, questions, reflections etc 
• shared a collaborative google document to add contact details for networking and sending out the pdf version of the presentation
• opened up the powerpoint presentation on my laptop
• when in the videoconference, skype was maximized to show Amanda on video, then when referring to specific slides, the ppt was maximized. This enabled Amanda’s video image to be projected (in small size) over the actual slide. I could grab her video and move her into a position where she could be seen but did not block out any of the images or text. A fabulous feature that I only discovered that day!
• Took photos of the class and the way in which Amanda appeared to the students. Share webcam view of her projected image in the computer room.
• Amanda’s voice has lots of character to hold student attention
• Had one quick test two days before to ensure our linkup would work.
• used my laptop with skype downloaded, cabled into University’s network, used a temporary username and password to login to their system, projected laptop screen onto their large white screen at front of room via a data projector. Brought my own speakers (thank goodness, as students would not have heard audio otherwise)

The room setup, cabled laptop, white screen for projection

Reasons for the session’s high success and being rated  as one of the top camp sessions:-

• Students introduced themselves in school groups via the webcamera  and in the backchannel to Amanda
• Amanda had created an engaging presentation using  text2pic to replace the usual dot points on slides, featuring  images as much as possible to show what she was talking about and gave examples of things that her students had said had worked for them.
• Amanda appeared at all times in video format so that students could always see their presenter.
• Amanda used interactivity where possible – with questions requiring feedback, written response etc
• She had also worked out a hands on session at the conclusion of her presentation. Students used magazines to cut out appropriate images to build posters on “The Operating Environment” or the “Macro Environment”

What I learnt

• how to have a ppt presentation up with the virtual presenter image shown in an overlay of the slide and discovering the ability to drop or drag this video image around the screen. Will test to see if it works when presenter shares their screen
• using text2pic app to replace the often boring dot points in Powerpoint. This creates very effective imagery.
• how to improve student external exam results based on the experience of another teacher
• the need to remind students of appropriate behaviour in a professional online chat
• being reminded of the need for each party to see each other or understand how they look to each other.

My laptop screen with ppt and Amanda on video

Have you used skype for virtual formal presentations? What elements of skype do you use?

Skype premium vs Google Hangouts

The dial up screen

Google Hangouts

In many educational networks, google hangouts are taking off in near viral proportions. The reasons may be due to the following:-

1. it comes free with a google+ account
2. a simple booking  process to create a ghangout, share a link, connect direct
3. the ability to have up to 10 videocameras on at once, a screen sharing facility,  file sharing and other useful apps (which google are constantly adding to).
4. the ability to record and store the ghangout on youtube
5. play to air in real time so that other participants can chat and participate in a space alongside the actual ghangout.
6. ability to invite people in via a telephone connection (available in some countries only)
7. “Enable Hangouts On Air” will stream a live hangout publicly on a Google+ profile, your YouTube channel and your website. Viewers can watch live, add their comments and questions to the conversation

USA, middle America, Germany and Australia participants

Skype

Skype has been a personal favourite of mine for many years now because:-

1. it is free
2. ability to use chat and/or use audio
3. ability to videoconference (although only two videos can be activated at one time)
4. create groups
5. group chats which can go 24/7
6. send files
7. share screens
8. use emoticons
9. group audio calls etc
10. automatically saves chat
11. userfriendly
12. globally known and established

Skype premium comes at a monthly cost but enables up to 10 video linkups at once. Day passes can also be purchased. Only one person needs to have the premium account and simply calls the other participants via the usual means.

Comparing the two:-

My challenge is the poor bandwidth that comes from living in a rural area of Australia. Skype can be flakey at times and my experiences with google hangouts has not been good to date. I keep dropping out. If I pull back the connection speed, I stay in a bit longer but audio and video quality can still vary and I must be cabled in. My assumption is that skype is less bandwidth heavy than google hangouts. This conflicted with some opinions on the HLW Skypers group, of which I am a member. To test  fully, my online friend Rheinhard from Germany organised a skype linkup using his premium account between two other colleagues in the USA and myself. Immediately after the skype linkup, we connected in a google hangout to compare the stability of the two.

Skype was stable and all went well with the first linkup. (I was on wireless for skype). We then moved to the google hangout, but once in the ghangout. I had to swap to my cabled computer. Even though I pulled back my connection speed I continued to drop out. After the fifth login, I called it quits. So, for me, skype premium and skype wins as being the most reliable and stable.

Conclusions and suggestions for others:

1. skype is far more stable than google hangouts for me
2. skype and skype premium works well on wireless, google hangouts need to used cables for best quality
3. you will need to test each tool to see which works best for you
4. test them fully with your partner(s)/colleagues
5. determine how many video linkups are required and what kind of participation is required from other interested parties.
6. Take care if holding google hangouts with classes that you have permissions for students to be aired on youtube, if that is the chosen direction..

Learning can be real!

Students in year 7 are learning how to use some of the lesser known features of MS Powerpoint. After creating animations in Powerpoint, I was going to get them to create games in Powerpoint. This was dependent on them accessing a file in the network drive in a 2011 folder. To my dismay, the folder had been removed. Now what!

I had just finished chatting to Lorraine Leo in skype re the imminent hurricane that was soon to arrive on the North Eastern area of USA, where Lorraine lived. I quickly messaged to see if she was still there and could she please speak to my students about this hurricane and its impact on her, her school and the area that she lived in. Lorraine was kind enough to agree. Once I had overcome the technical issues that seemed to beset my hardware in the computer room, Lorraine appeared in the video option of skype and spoke to my students for 10 mins or so. Her school was closed for 2 or 3 days, they had been warned to stay indoors. Some areas had been evacuated. Her concern was for her elderly mother and other family members who lived in New York etc. Unfortunately, the screen share facility did not work as Lorraine was about to share a presentation featuring information on this.

The students were able to come up to the webcam one at a time and ask her questions. Halfway through my lesson, 50% of the class then went out to an early lunch as they were involved in the school production. I ended the call with Lorraine as the video was not working. This left me with 10 boys who were so intensely engaged in googling the hurricane, where it started, what it looked like, the weather maps, the increasing impact of it, the loss of lives etc. One of the boys found the youtube video of President Obama’s urgent speech to the nation and we all watched that.

As Lorraine was still online, the boys went up to the chat feature and keyed in further questions for her. Here are a couple of the text questions:-

• Qu: Are you getting much wind and rain at the moment? Response:Hi Ross. No we are not getting very much rain or wind at all right now. It feels sort of like we are close to the ocean though.. I think that the humidity is higher than normal. Let me give you a link.  Weather forecast Here you can see the temperature.
• what is the temperature? It is 50.9 degrees Fareinheit (This sparked research as we record temperatures in celsius)

The lunchbell then went, but what a lot of learning went on, from a short skype call which thoroughly engaged the students and sparked their curiousity, from a real person expecting a real natural disaster – the local knowledge, the atmosphere,  the feelings involved, the unknown future, the lead up to a natural disaster etc were all there! Students were going home that night to research further and watch for any TV news. Since then Lorraine has made a little video of the strong winds blowing outside her window for students to watch when they come into class tomorrow.

The twitter hashtag has been added to my tweetdeck column #sandyq for twitter updates from people – there are images, updates, news items etc (and some updates that are  inappropriate) but all part of learning.

Thank you so much Lorraine for making learning real for us! Stay safe, take care and we look forward to hearing from you once that hurricane has passed.

Global challenges – “Lunch with our author 2013″

School can be a really busy place, with many interruptions to a timetable and routine experienced almost on a weekly basis. Christopher Herz, our author from New York has kindly offered to run further lunchtime classes with those students who are interested in further developing their writing skills.

Here are the challenges we face when working cross hemisphere, cross continent, time zones:-

• Timing of session with a school’s busy  curriculum: the need to meet at lunchtime, as students come from across year levels – year 6 through to year 10. (Wouldn’t it be wonderful if students could be released from their class for one lesson to do this? Sigh! but that is there is this perceived need that the curriculum must be covered in individual timetabled subjects)
• Suitable times: finding a suitable time for both sides – Hawkesdale and New York. Our early school morning coincides with late night before New York. Our lunchtime pre-daylight saving is 11pm New York time. Too late to expect anyone to link up with us on a regular basis, when there is work the next day.
• The School Year: The timing of the school year – the need, therefore, to wait for daylight saving, to start which is into term 4 – a crazy time of year for schools in Australia as we this is our last term and senior students finish early, school camps are on etc
• Finding a suitable day, knowing that our today is Christopher’s tomorrow
• Achievable time span: the need to keep the number of lunchtime meets to an achievable time span
• Student commitment: getting an ongoing commitment from students to complete tasks given within the week
• Extra curricula school activities that can interrupt student attendance
• Achievable outcomes: Working out the best approach to the writing activities – getting achievable outcomes within a limited time span. Christopher is doing this for free, so we do not want to encroach too much on his precious time.

Attempting to overcome the challenges:-

• Offer the weekly lunchtime class to years 6 to 10. Students come on a volunteer basis but must be committed to completing the tasks given by Christopher
• Avoid extra curricula school activities
• Agreeing to a 5 week program to avoid end of year activities
• Christopher came up with great idea of “Writing through the Senses”. Each week, he will use a different sense to inspire students to think beyond their imagination and create plausible characters, scenes and stories that will be engaging and captivating to their audiences.
• Christopher told students that they must write for 15 mins everyday and carry pen and paper with them at all times, jotting down notes when they can.

Notebooks and mobile device ready for note taking

And so, we have now completed two weeks of linkups – each one offering further challenges (which will be written about in further posts) but also some wonderful  inspiration provided for the students and their writing, sheer engagement on the part of students and Christopher’s obvious passion coming through.

They are way too young for technology!

I know that I said these 5 and 6 years olds were far too young for technology, but each time I leave your classroom, I am nearly reduced to tears!

Setting the scene to this comment:-

The classroom teacher has been absent several times when I am timetabled to teach technology to prep/ones. The substitute teacher is senior, conservative  and set in her ways (although she does her work well) and offered to come along to help. I jumped at this chance as it is always good to have an extra set of hands.

At the end of the first class with her, she informed me  in no uncertain terms, that

• they should not be using technology at such a young age,
• rewards and feedback should not come in the form of sound and
• when they do see a computer for the first time, they should be taught to touch type etc.

I became very defensive as it was not my personal choice to teach these little ones and I have found it challenging and hard work. Plus, I have not had too many critics or ‘blockers’ for my work.

My heart sank when I noticed that she was on duty on another occasion when we had a videoconference linkup with another young class. However, she actually enjoyed participating in that and then when we had a recent skype linkup with Debney Meadows, a school near Melbourne which has predominantly African students, she was actively involved. The students introduced themselves one at a time, shared class toys and the Debney Meadows students showed the bean shoot they were growing.

Showing our learning toy

A two week old bean shoot

It was then question time. One of my boys sat in the talking chair and quite candidly asked why the girls were wearing “those things on their head”. My heart sank, as I am always concerned that we will cause offense. However, one of the girls stood up explained why they did, and it was on with the next question.

As the videoconference finished, the substitute teacher took them back to their classroom. As she passed I heard her say:-

Anne, I know that I said they were too young for technology, but I always seem to leave your class, close to tears!

What more can I say!