Getting kids hyped about blogging: an update

A few weeks ago we looked at our blog stats and our global audiences.  Since then, my learners have become more interested in sharing their learning on their blogs. I really wanted to capture and keep their enthusiasm, so I have made a display for the room. 

1000 club

My kids were really excited to see their blog views as well as the countries. I decided to encourage this attitude, as well as a little competition.  I started off with just the '1000 club' - for students who have 1000 blog views or more. Since some of my students have only just got blogs, I decided to also include a '500 club'. I want my learners to feel proud of their blog views and celebrate their global audience.  

Top bloggers

I also wanted to encourage my learners to regularly post high quality blog posts.  I decided to run a weekly competition, using a tally system.  Every time a student posts a high quality blog post, they get one point.  The top blogger of the week gets a prize.  I have enlisted the help of 3 students to check the blog posts and record the points. My helpers check that the blog post clearly explains their learning, how they went and what they can do to improve. My helpers also check that the blog posts make sense. It has also been helpful to have helpers, as it can be hard to check every blog post before it is posted.

Infographics

At the bottom of the display I have included the students infographics about their global audience.

How it's going

Even though I have just started using this blog display, my learners are already so keen to get sharing their learning. In fact, after explaining how the top bloggers competition works, something crazy happened.  The bell went for morning tea, and no one moved.  Every student stayed and completed their blog posts. And it kept happening throughout the week.  Personally, I think a little extrinsic motivation can work wonders. When students write a blog post they are summarising, evaluating and reflecting on their learning. Even if they are motivated by the idea of a prize, they are still summarising, evaluating and reflecting on their learning, which I think is awesome. 

Next steps

I am hoping that my students enthusiasm towards blogging will continue.  It is important that I continue to stress the importance of quality blog posts, where students summarise, evaluate and reflect. I would like my learners to write more detail in their blog posts that is more than "I need to try harder".   I would like my learners to be more specific as this will help them to understand their next steps in learning.

Digital Tools my Learners are Loving

I can't quite believe I am almost half-way through my first term of teaching in my own classroom!  It feels like time has flown by, but it also feels like yesterday that I met my classroom for the first time.  However, the students have grown to be a lot more confident using digital tools - which is very different to how they came into my classroom.

I was super excited to begin teaching my learners in a way they hadn't learnt before.  Luckily, my learners really took to using digital tools - so much so, that they get pretty thrown when we do anything on paper.

Here are my top three tools/sites that my learners are loving.

Nearpod

I've wrote about it before, and I am still a massive fan of Nearpod.  My learners absolutely love using it.  They go from reluctant, shy learners to confident collaborators.  So far I have used Nearpod to gauge students Prior Knowledge of explanations, as well as inquiry lessons about stormwater pollution and the health of rivers.  I have been using a range of its features, such as polls, quizzes, open-ended questions and collaborate (like Padlet and LinoIt).  What is so great about Nearpod is that you can add as many slides and activities as you want.  I often have slide with an image to start conversation, followed by a poll or quiz, and then an open-ended question or collaborate. Another cool feature that my learners love is the ability to 'like' posts on collaborative activities.

One day I discovered I accidentally erased the student's contributions to a Nearpod.  Instead, I got my learners to participate in a quick bus stop rotation, where they had to share their ideas about a photograph to do with stormwater pollution and rivers.  The content of the lesson was basically the same as what would have been done with Nearpod.  However, the students level of engagement was completely different.  It was interesting that as soon as we got back to using digital tools (Mentimeter this time) the students perked up and were engaged once again.  This shows the power that tools like Nearpod and Mentimeter have on my learners. They are are highly engaging and my learners love them!

Answergarden

This was suggested by Ashley during Summer School and I wrote about it in a previous blog post. 5 weeks down and my learners are still loving Answergarden.  I have used Answergarden when creating a class contract, getting prior knowledge, during writing lessons and 40 character summaries in inquiry.



I think this tool works for a number of reasons.  Firstly, it encourages students to summarise and be succinct.  It is a great way to see the ideas that are common amongst a group or class.  Learner's also find it much easier to share their ideas on Answergarden instead of verbally.  While it's easier for them to share, learners are still sharing their ideas with their peers before they post, so they still are sharing their ideas verbally.

Prodigy

I discovered Prodigy from a Facebook post on the NZ Teachers (Primary) page. It is a maths site where students are wizards and battle pets and other characters. In order to attack, students must correctly answer a maths question.  Teachers can assign certain topics and decide how long the topic will run for.  You also can track your students achievements and the topics that they are struggling with.

Assign topics or strands for your students to work on

Check students achievements and gaps

I was so surprised with how much my learners loved using this site - so much so, that they were using it during their 'free time' at Tech (at Tamaki College).  One afternoon, with a change of plans I suddenly had the last block free.  I decided to let the students pick between finishing three tasks - Hour of Code, an all about me activity or Prodigy.  All but two students choose to go on Prodigy. Further, learners stayed on the site the whole block! No cheeky changes of tabs or going on other sites.

Summing it up

I use Nearpod as a way to expand on my students ideas.  It serves as a conversation starter and allows for my learners to confidently share their ideas. They love seeing the poll and quiz results, as well as watching their ideas on collaborate get 'likes'.

Answergarden is an awesome way to identify common thoughts/ideas around a topic.  It is also a useful tool to help learners to summarise and be succinct.

Prodigy has added some extra excitement to my mathematics rotation. The 'game-like' features have hooked my learners in.  The 'Reporting' section helps me to see where gaps are in my learners knowledge.

All in all, I'm really enjoying using digital tools to help engage learners and encourage collaboration. I will definitely continue to hunt for new and exciting tools to try in my classroom.

Summer School '17: Digital Tools I am Excited to Try

This week I have not only come away with lots of knowledge about learning theories, pedagogies, and affordances related to digital technologies, but also an array of apps and programmes that can enhance the learning. It is easy to get stuck in your ways and use the same tools, so I'm glad I learnt about some tools and their uses in the classroom.  Here are some tools which I am excited to try this year in my classroom.

Answer Garden

I came across AnswerGarden thanks to Ashley and her activity on Growth Mindset. It is a great little app that could be used in many ways.  If you want a smaller version, or want to conduct a poll where participants can't see the answers, use MicroGarden instead. This can be done when selecting 'share' on your AnswerGarden. If you want to share your finished AnswerGarden you can export the data to Wordle or Tagxedo, which creates pretty Word Clouds you can add on your blog, or print out.  If you want to read more about AnswerGarden, read this.

Mentimeter

Latai introduced me to Mentimenter, and I am so glad she did! It is her favourite app and I can definitely see why. It will be a great tool to use to check understandings, share ideas as well as serve as a brain break. There are many pre-made examples from different categories too.  This tool can be used by teachers, as well as students.  Its really easy to use, and getting your learners onto your Mentimeter is easy. All they need to do is jump onto menti.com log on to and put in your code.

Special mentions

LinoIt

LinoIt is a collaborative multi-media sticky note tool which Georgia suggested the MDTA cohort to use. I am already quite a fan of Padlet, since it is pretty user-friendly and offers a lot of the same things as LinoIt.  Both tools allow for collaboration and you can add in images, videos and other links.  

Here are a few aspects which set LinoIt apart from similar tools.

• Different coloured sticky's - this can be helpful if you want to colour code ideas under different subgroups.
• Anyone can move a sticky note - unlike other tools, which only allow the poster to move their sticky note.
• Tagging feature - the tags are like hashtags, which helps you quickly see sticky notes which have the same tags. If you click on a tag, the sticky notes with the same tag are visible, while the others are blacked out.

As with similar tools, LinoIt has many uses in the classroom.  Click here to read an exhaustive list. If you want so see an example of LinoIt's use, check out Georgia's LinoIt. Her students have colour-coded their sticky notes and used tags to share what they know about the Olympic Values. They have also used various modes to show their understanding (images, video clips and text).

Trello

Trello was introduced to me by my lecturer who used it to show the outline for each day. Trello is a collaborative tool which helps you organise your projects using a board with lists and cards. It shows you what is being worked on, who is working on it and what is completed.  You can organise your board with a series of lists, and can add 'cards' under each list. For each card, you can add labels, due dates and attachments. Make your Trello a collaborative document by adding members. You can see what group members (and you) have done by looking at the 'activity' section, which shows the board's history. You can learn more about Trello here.

This tool can be used by both teachers and students.  I am keen to use Trello as an online to-do list to ensure I stay on top of my workload this year.  I would also like to encourage my learners to use this tool when working collaboratively in groups.

I am looking forward to seeing how my new classroom responds to the new digital tools I will be using in my teaching!

Creating my Digital CV

For our last (ever!) digital immersion day we created an online CV.  It was a great opportunity to use our digital skills to showcase our learning journey, teaching pedagogies and digital capabilities.  

I had a look at my 'digital CV' I created last year when I applied for jobs and I couldn't help but cringe a little! I had just been introduced to Google sites and I created my first ever site as my Digital CV. I used the drop down menu function and choose a template.  It was a pretty good effort for a first timer, but it shows just how much I have learnt.  

My 2015 digital CV

My 2016 digital CV

For my 2016 digital CV I wanted everything to be on the same page.  I wanted it to look as simplistic as possible, so used HTML to create tables for each of aspects I wanted to include in my CV.  I  wanted to use more images and less text.  I used Google Draw to turn my images into links.

With the help of Dorothy, I created an album of photos to provide a snapshot of my teaching.  I did this by creating a Google Presentations and inserting photos onto each slide.  Also, on each slide I included left and right arrows, which were hyperlinked to the previous or next slide.  You need to publish it to the web and make sure the auto advance settings are on. Once you have created your Presentation, you add it as a Gadget on your Google site.  The Gadget you use is 'Slideshow Maker'.  Then you follow the steps to add in the slideshow and specify the height and width.

Make your site pretty

I use a few websites to help make my website look good.  I like to choose fonts that look interesting and compliment each other.  I will always use different fonts for titles and normal text.  It can be hard choosing from such a large range of fonts, so I always use 100daysoffonts to help me.  Note that this probably shouldn't be shared with students as some of the text used is not appropriate for kids.

I also like to choose colour schemes and use a few different sites to help me. Color-hex and coolors are my go to.  My favourite is coolors because a) you can adjust the shades b) you can save your colour palette by exporting it and c) you can upload an image and use the colour picker to find the hex-codes for the colours you want!

Manaiakalani Film Festival

Today was the 9th annual Manaiakalani Film Festival.  Instead of our usual digital immersion days, the MDTA spent the day at Hoyts helping out and enjoying the awesome films our learners have created. 

It was a pretty awesome feeling to see my  film on the big screen!  I am so proud of my learners and the effort they put into the making of our film.  All the actors did an excellent job and helped come up with some awesome shots. I was also lucky to have an awesome director (Lauren) who took charge of the filming.  

Here is my first Manaiakalani Film Festival film, enjoy!

Let us know what you think! Feel free to leave a comment on our class blog.  You can also check out the films from all schools in the cluster by clicking here.

Class OnAir Episode: How-to-Haiku's

Here is my first Class OnAir episode!  Last week we learnt about Haiku poems.  On Tuesday, we learnt about the structure and features used in Haiku's.  Following this, the students found their own examples of a summer, autumn, winter and spring haiku.  Next, the students annotated the features they liked about the Haiku poems they had selected. 


On Wednesday the class worked collaboratively to use what they had learnt about the structure and features of a Haiku, to create a class Haiku.  This is what I chose to film.  Something to note is that we had an ERO visitor in the classroom during filming.  This is why they were much more quiet than what they usually are.  There is also a lot more teacher talk than what would usually happen during our lessons, as I needed to give the learners extra support and prompts to encourage them to share.  I think my learners did a great job under the unusual circumstances.


Overall I was pleased with how the lesson went.  The learners were engaged and it was a great oportunity to use a new digital tool - padlet.  I like to use clips from YouTube during my writing lesson as the learners can draw on what they see and hear to create descriptive pieces of writing. This is particularly beneficial for our struggling writers.


Click on the screenshot to have a look at my Class OnAir site. It is quite daunting putting myself out there and it feels a little odd to watch myself teach, but I can use this to figure out what I can do to improve my teaching. 

Chelsea OnAir: Creating my First Class OnAir Episode

Last week we prepared ourselves for our first Class OnAir episode.  Class OnAir has been created in response to the question - how do we teach in a digital 1:1 learning environment?  This year Class OnAir follows five talented teachers from the Manaiakalani cluster of schools.  They film episodes which provides insight into how Manaiakalani teachers use technology in their every-day teaching.  Click on the link to learn more and watch the Class OnAir teacher's in action.

What's in a Class OnAir episode

• Videos of the lesson
• Overview of lesson
• Link to detailed plan
• Relfections and next steps
• Links to learners activities and blog posts

A while ago we explored the Class OnAir site and provided feedback to the teachers involved. Now it is the MDTA BTs turn to have a go!  We had Matt Goodwin come in and give us some helpful tips for creating a class OnAir episode.

My first episode

I chose to create my OnAir episode about Haiku poetry.  Over the past four weeks my classroom has thoroughly enjoyed our unit on figurative language, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to see if they could use their learning in a new context - Haiku poetry.

I filmed my lesson this week.  The filming is the easy part.  To start with it is a little unusual to be filming myself as a teacher.  However myself and my learners did relax as time went on.  Editing is very time consuming - it is hard to decide which parts are valuable and which can be culled.  I have almost finished editing and my Class OnAir site is pretty much completed.  Stay tuned to see my very first Class OnAir episode!

Is your default the way you learn OR the way your learners learn?

Today we joined up with other Manaiakalani teachers for our Digital Immersion session.  The focus for this term is all about visible learning and its benefits for our students. Learners in our communities come to school below the expected standard for New Zealand students.  In order to get our learners up to standard by year 8, they need to make a 1.5 year accelerated shift. Visible learning enables such an accelerated shift.  

Each learner is different

We started the day with the question: how do your learners learn?  We chose three students and wrote down the ways in which they preferred to learn.  The answers were then collated and turned into a word cloud.  The results were interesting:

As you can see from the Tagul, there is a wide range of learning preferences.  Our learners learn differently.  This is important to remember when creating learning experiences. As teachers we need to make sure we are considering the learning preferences of all our learners, not just one in particular.   Following this, we watched a thought provoking clip of Chrissie Butler discussing UDL - Universal Design for Learning. Two key ideas resonated with me:

• What engages one learners doesn't necessarily engage another learner
• Is your default the way you learn or the way your learners learn?

So how can we ensure our students learning preferences are catered to in our lessons? Can we cater to  20+ students learning needs in one lesson? 

...Enter multi-modal learning!

Multi-modal learning is an approach which uses a range of modes to develop students understanding of a topic or an idea.  It is related to Gardener's theory of 'Multiple Intelligences'. The site uses a range of audio, visual and textual (paragraphs, bullet points and sentences) resources.  Students can synthesise their learning across multiple types of media to gain a better understanding.

As the MDTA already learnt about this earlier in the year (here and here), we were set with the challenge of extending our learners further.  We were set the task of encouraging our learners to select their own texts to help make sense of what they are learning.  

As my classroom has already had experience with using a range of multi-modal sites, I decided to challenge my students with a trickier topic and include self-selected texts.  Our inquiry topic for the term is weather, so I created my site to help my students learn about lightning and thunder.  I chose a range of texts (paragraphs, bullet points and sentences), videos and images (including GIFS).  As the science behind lightning is quite tricky, the texts range in reading difficulty.   I want my learners to engage with more challenging texts, so it is my hope that they will first use whichever mode they prefer to learn in, and then use the more challenging texts to deepen their understanding.

Click on the image to have a look at the site that I have created using HTML.  We have begun using this site today and will continue to use it throughout the week.

My Takeaways from Manaiakalani's Annual Hui

On Friday the MDTA were very lucky to attend Manaiakalani's 5th annual Hui - a place where teachers and learners across Manaiakalani celebrate and share their accomplishments.  

This has ended up being a rather lengthy post, as I gained many new insights from the teachers, researchers and learners at the hui.

In the morning

First up we heard our Manaiakalani student ambassadors share their learning.  It was really interesting to hear from students how they learnt in their school.  What I like about Manaiakalani is that every school is different.  Although we are all following Manaiakalani's 'Learn, Create, Share' pedagogy, each school is able to put their own spin on it to reflect the community they are in.  There were plenty of ideas that I will borrow and repurpose in my classroom, like the use of a 'Goal Wall' to make goals visible to learners.  

Following this, the Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher's shared their inquiries with the insights they gained along the way. I came away feeling inspired to give my own teaching programme a shake up to ensure my lessons are engaging, motivating and using digital technologies as much as possible.  Whilst I do believe I use technology a lot in the classroom, these teachers had come up with ideas that I had not thought of before.  Check out my infographic to see my main takeaways from the MIT.

Next up

After morning tea we heard from Rachel Williams about her holiday intervention programmes 'Summer Learning Journey' and 'Winter Learning Journey'.  Rachel's aim is to help lesson the 'summer drop off', where learners achievement declines between T4 and T1 after the school holidays. Her results show that students who participated in the 'Summer Learning Journey' had less of a drop compared to students who did not participate in the intervention.  Rachel's data was very compelling and I am excited to encourage my learners to participate in 'Summer Learning Journey 2.0'.

Next Woolf Fisher researchers, Rebecca Jesson, Stuart McNaughton and Aaron Wilson shared their insights gathered from observing teachers, and challenged us to consider what we are doing to accelerate our learners achievement.

Lastly

Dorothy, Russell and Pat Snedden spoke about where we are now and where to next for Manaiakalani.  Although we are doing a great job accelerating our student's achievement, we need to continue to reflect, refine and improve our teaching. We have a series of outreach clusters which are looking at us and using what we are doing to accelerate their learners achievement too.  Therefore, we need to be at the forefront of change and be constantly seeking ways to help our learners achieve.  Pat Snedden's talk was the most inspiring of the day.  He is so passionate about lifting our learners out of subsistence to capital builders.  I think Pat Snedden gave me the kick I needed to ensure that I am constantly doing my best and seeking ways to improve my teaching, because it is what my learners deserve.

I also used Twitter when I heard something which resonated with me.  Here is a collation of my tweets from the Hui.

Creating a Site for Inquiry

A few weeks ago I created a site for LS1 and LS2's inquiry - Our Global Neighbours. It was great to use what I had learnt during the Current Events task, and apply it to a new situation. Whilst was a challenge to create the entire page with html (rather than inserting tables) it was very addictive! I enjoyed facing challenges and finding my own solutions. Here is the link our collaborative inquiry page. In the beginning I chose the font that we use for all our titles on our class site (Londrina Shadow). However we have learners with dyslexia in our class so I choose to keep the font plain and simple. This was an important decision because my site needs to be accessible to all.

Digital Immersion: Creating a Site Using HTML

Today we consolidated our learning and understanding of Google Sites, HTML and critical thinking in current events through the creation of a current events page.  The 2016 MDTA cohort was set with the challenge of each creating a multi-modal page on Google Sites about a current event.  In previous weeks we discussed critical thinking in social studies and reading, and chose current event topics.  We then had a week to come up with the content of the lesson.  

I found creating my change challenging but very addicting!  After plenty of trials and errors, it was a great feeling to correctly fix something using HTML.  A challenge I had was that I wanted to unmerge cells that had previously been merged together.  This was tricky as when you merge cells you need to delete another.  Merging cells  shifts the one cell to take up the space of two cells,  therefore you are left with an odd cell that is to the right of your table.

Merging Cells using HTML 

Merge rows by adding the code rowspan="(number)" inside the <tb> code of the cell you want to merge

This shifts the cell to the right of the table.  You then need to delete that entire cell.

Unmerging and Adding Cells

When you want to unmerge and add a row back in again you are left with a gap where it should have been.  After some thinking and reading of the HTML I had, I figured how to add a cell back in by writing the codes <td> and </td> below the code for the previous cell.

You can unmerge cells by changing the rowspan code to rowspan"1".  However this leaves you with a blank space where the previous cell was deleted.

Place some x's in the column next to the blank space. This shows where you want to create a new column.

Find the x's to locate where you need to add in a column.  Insert <td> and </td> underneath the previous </td> for the xxxx column

Whilst this may have been very simple problem to solve for HTML savvy people, it was quite the accomplishment for someone who had no idea about HTML two weeks ago!

My Current Events Page

Here is the page I created using HTML.  Please note that it is not entirely finished.  I would like to increase the white cell padding and change the vertical alignment within each cell to be centered.  I am still on my HTML learning journey and will fix it when I figure out how to. Click on the screenshot below to explore my page :) .

I will be using my multi-modal current events page with my learners next week. 

Digital Immersion: Create to Learn & Effective Site Layout

Create to Learn

'Create' is a vital part of Manaiakalani's learning cycle.  Creativity has a significant place in all classrooms, irrespective of the learners age and capabilities.  It allows learners to demonstrate their learning in ways that align with their strengths and interests. Gone are the days of dull, non-autonomous summative tasks!  In Manaiakalani schools, learners demonstrate and consolidate their learning by creating a Digital Learning Object (DLO). 

Learning about the importance of 'Create to Learn' got me thinking about my current teaching practice.  Am I creating to learn or learning to create? Are my 'create' tasks helping to consolidate my learners learning? Or is the focus more on the tools they are using? These are important questions to reflect on, so I can be certain that my lessons allow my learners to embrace their creativity and express their understandings in a way which best suits their needs, interests and strengths.

Effective Site Layout

After learning about 'Create to Learn' we moved examined the principles of effective site layout.  After discussing the ten principles, we examined 10 class sites from around New Zealand.  We had to think critically about whether or not the sites were effectively designed by rating them against the 10 principles and justifying our reasoning for our ratings. 

Click on this screenshot to explore Learning Space 2's site.

Critiquing the exemplar class sites got me thinking about how Learning Space 2's class site compares to the 10 principles of effective site layout.  Robyn, Kiri and I worked hard to collaboratively create a class site which meets each of the criteria for effective web design. 

Here are a few things that I believe demonstrates that LS2's site meets the principles of effective site layout:

• Each page is uniform and simplistic, creating a sense of cohesion amongst the teachers and their groups.  At a glance, you will notice that all teacher pages look the same which is our intention.  We did this because  a. we wanted the three of us to be seen as one, and b. we didn't want our learners to feel as though one teacher was doing something that was better/easier/harder etc. 
• Our use 'wee mee' avatars is a great visual prompt that focuses our learners attention.  Our learners know that clicking on their teachers face will take them directly to their tasks. 
• Get to where you need to be within 3 clicks.  This has proven to be extremely effective for our learners, as they can find their work easily without getting lost or confused.  
• Our class site is 'accessible to all'.  All our tumbles, tasks and resources need to be visible to anybody with the link.  It is beneficial for learners as it ensures their learning is 'rewindable', as they can go back to the learning at any time.  Moreover, it is beneficial for whanau as they can see what their child is learning.

In term 2 I will be in charge of creating a site for our inquiry unit.  I look forward to applying what I have learnt about effective site layout to create a site which fits the 10 principles.