What are teachers excited about?

When a group of educators get together in 2014 what are they finding as exciting.

Teachers at our learning community's open meeting had this to say.

• using video to capture learning
• using WeVideo to for videomaking and stopmotion animation
• using iPad to entice reluctant learners 
• using whiteboards to engage entice and excite learners
• using a Google site to track my own learning

When I look at the list there is a focus on the motivational things that will hook students into learning and doing.

A way to think about learning in the now and for the future is to make learning motivational

the following are key ideas in Katrina Shwartz's mindshift article about this.

• INTEGRATED PROJECTS
• INTEREST-BASED AND RELEVANT
• MAKE IT HANDS-ON
• KNOWING TEACHERS CARE
• LEARNING FROM FAILURE
• EVALUATING WORK

Teacher's caring and daring is the starting point for what can become a cycle of upward achievement. 

Students in Year 6 are learning about well being and designing a lunch menu for boarders at our school. 

I can see that they are motivated by their autonomy in developing recipes etc. This is a hard process to get right especially when you adapt and change the things you are cooking to make them original. This is where the "knowing teachers care" really matters. Kids learning independently can't be just a convenience. This youtube shows the students talking to a chef and a you can see the learning and thinking written on their faces.

The Reuseversity

Teachers are innovators and combiners of things. A colleauge Elliot Tiffany has combined university with Reusing to create the reusiversity in which his students are getting great qualifications. First let's have a look at some of the outcomes for his students. Below that Elliot has kindly offered to share his ideas with others. We have included a sample of the challenge and a post-it note that may help teachers ans student make the most of the making.

A few projects 

Jared's Pallet bike rack

Here is a sample off the Certificate level Challenge

To make it a success we learnt a few things that might help.

Reuseversity by davein2it

Credible Self Direction 1

One of the students at my school has just bought his own computer. He wanted a little bit of advice as to how to get it going. The computer was old and incompatible with even the most basic keyboard we had. What impressed me was the effort that Callum has put into finding out about what he need to do to get this going. I offered to give him a slightly newer computer in return for a couple of articles and received the following first installment by the end of the day.

My favorite quotes are

I acquired a desktop computer tower for $1 at a garage sale in Tauranga it looked in perfect condition. 

It was a pretty bad pc i discovered

I ask my friends in the ICT lab for help, they point out how useless it is (because before i didn’t realise), but I’m still going to use it.




There are couple of discoveries here.

• Students will persist when they are motivated by possible achievement.

• Students are learning independently of us in areas that we can either choose or choose not to support and encourage.

• Give students a chance to work and control real technologies let them show where they are at.

On Saturday 28th July I acquired a desktop computer tower for $1 at a garage sale in Tauranga it looked in perfect condition. Everyone asked me if I was going to take it home and open it up, I said I don't know. The next day I wired it up with the cables, power check, VGA check, sound check, usb for keyboard and mouse... there was none! So I opened it and saw a pretty empty case, but everything was perfect except no hidden usbs. I re-arranged all the ports so I could fit in an usb pci card and plug it into the motherboard.  However when I turned it on it gave a beep and loaded up the BIOS (basic input output system).  It was a pretty bad pc i discovered, no usbs because it is a Pentium 2, it has a quantum fireball hard drive, an Intel Celeron processor and 65536k of memory. I ask my friends in the ICT lab for help, they point out how useless it is (because before i didn’t realise), but I’m still going to use it.

System BIOS (Compaq screen is of another pc)

PCI card slot on motherboard

Pc turned on

In Our Own time

When we give kids a challenge and some ownership they love it.
They learn as well. Having offered students a chance to come in at lunchtime and work with Lego robotics we have about ten committed students. 


They turn up consistently and work on this.


They are experiencing flow.

One of the ideas I am working on with this group is that
this is not a race and to acknowledge their own achievements.


The Temptation is to "borrow code" from others a little further ahead. 


With our own efforts well get there and when we do we'll understand more than borrowers.
With our own interests and challenges we are more likely to see this through.


Another quote to support this is "be a maker not a taker"

What Mckenzie had to say about Robotics and their Robot Storm.

Storm "So far we have built our robot. We are currently wireing and putting on our sensors. We downloaded the program we needed to use to program our storm robot.Our robot is basically made out of lego,  I like building Storm because it is a great challenge to achieve."

Finally Have a look at this clip that comes without sound.

5 seconds only. What it show is grandparents looking at the kids playing with robotics. I don't think the future is all about robotics but the looks on the faces of grandparents shows how different their learning and lives were.

Personalised and Formative

There are a lot of places on the web that will help students build Number knowledge and basic facts recollection.


Sites like Xtra Math offer a few keen advantages.

• It is intelligent enough to help develop what students don’t know; personalising their learning
• It focuses on what basic math facts students can recall, not what they can calculate. Three seconds is a carefully selected compromise that is long enough that a relatively slow typist can enter a recalled answer, and short enough so that most finger-counted responses are not erroneously considered fluent. If you increase the interval then you are no longer measuring fluency.
• It is able to manage a class of students calling each in turn to participate.
• It is able to help in the communication with parents and provide formative information for parents
• It has class email updates
• It comes at no cost although donations are welcome

Have established this now and will begin adding students soon 

Here is the teacher overview video if you want a look.

Getting Started with XtraMath -- for Teachers from XtraMath on Vimeo.

What Students want to Say to us

The Key Message: That we don’t just enjoy using the computers but they help us to do research.
               We can learn alot faster using the technology we have today.

I found Says it on Lenva’s Cool tools for teachers Wiki and
put some of student messages into images

The students came up with these in a Google Doc

Sayings we could use:

1. I can do 3 different types of homework at once on a laptop and still talk to my friends.
2. I can see France, England, Japan and go on top of Mt Everest all in one day just by clicking a few buttons.
3. I can search, listen to music, type and personalize at the same time.
4. I can be made more interactive.
5. I understand the topics by thinking real world problems.
6. I can see more clearly how things happen and work.
7. Instead of taking forever by drawing diagrams, I can make diagrams online.
8. I can think about how to make some technology better which expands my thinking.
9. I can use art programs to make my ideas more creative.
10. Most people don’t think how technology helps us in learning... we do.
11. We explore our technology instead of using it only for it’s designed purpose. We become curious.

Tomorrow we looking to develop this more into a movie watch this space

100 Hour Challenge

I am undertaking a hundred hour challenge.
I will be blogging about this to report progress.

• Ewan McIntosh’s Challenge
• What is my Challenge?
• Why this Challenge?
  

Ewan McIntosh Laid out a hundred hour challenge

Don't just read this post. Do something.

Here’s my challenge. Right now, put aside 100 hours starting at some point in the next twelve months. Do it right now, in your head. Put that time aside. 100 hours. 7 hours a week for 14 weeks. One hour a day, or one working day a week. It’s one term out of your entire life, it’s nothing. Okay, you’ve got that 100 hours?

Now for the next two days, go to talks (or listen to them online) and start conversations with people you don’t know, and choose what to spend your 100 hours on.

I guarantee that everyone reading this can produce something or has some special skill, and maybe they’re not even aware of it.

Ask your friends, colleagues and students what their’s is. Find out, because you’ll get ideas about what to learn yourself, and decide what to spend your 100 hours on.

Because when you contribute, when you participate in culture, when you’re no longer solving problems, but inventing culture itself, that is when life starts getting interesting.

Full blog post link

And mine is … D R U M   R O L L please

What is it?

The stakes are high because I have chosen to help my son Jack who wants to publish a book.
I am reading, talking with him and finding out about him a little more. We are working in online spaces
and face to face. Who’d have thought collaborating with each other in the same house and much of it online.

This is Jack.

Why this Challenge?
Jack has always written and I have not always read this writing. As a parent I have often been too busy and perhaps too self absorbed. This was an opportunity to give time to Jack around a mutual interest. I believe that young people are capable of more than we give them credit for. Jack’s story was over 60 pages when I suggested the challenge. A barrier to taking this further is an audience an editor and a mentor. I have decided to become involved, is this a good decision? When someone’s passions are at stake any mentor coach has the ability to make or break motivation.
We will see ….

Here are a couple of extracts form Jack’s Writing

Shaking my head, I tried to rid the noise from my ears like an animal tries to rid a fly from its back.

I was hardly aware of my body slipping down the slope, rolling over rubble and rocks as my eyes closed shut, and my ability to stay conscious abandoned me.

Digital Citizenship – a big ask

We have students with connectivity and a number of choices to make.
We can protect them to a certain extent and of course we do by filtering and
education B U T in the end we can only do so much ….

I have spoken to students about this and asked them to collaborate on a document where they are asked

What we think as students about digital citizenship.....
What the school should do about students who download age restricted material is ...
How the School should try to protect students from things on the internet is ...
Should the school lock down computers so that we can't install anything ? Why ? Why Not?
What we should be able to do with our computers is...
What we shouldn’t be able to do with our computers is...
Questions we have around digital citizenship are.

Will post back what this group thinks soon

Purchasing/maintenance Questions for 1:1 programmes

Having been through a year of 1 to 1 laptop use in our school I am preparing for a workshop at ulearn09 looking at what schools need to prepare for 1 to 1 learning. Many people will be seeing this as a simple transition to a greater density of devices on their networks. The best way for us to decide and think about this is probably to consider the implications of future events. The following are discussion starters for some important questions in this process.

We have got 50 devices and over half of them are having a problem with not starting up properly what should we do? We can get a high power laptop for the same price as a netbook that should be better? What are the hidden costs of this programme? are there any? Should the parents/students be able to bring any laptop of their choice? The device choice is not too important most devices today are of a good quality let’s just get on with it? A parent is able to secure a good deal on a netbook for us should we take it?

And the answers are…
Well ok No answers but there is no doubt these are important questions. We have had to increase our network support in-house to accommodate this. We purchased a very robust looking computer the classmatepc. We have 130 of these being used by year 7 students who take them home and we have had dealt with one issue that effected over 50% of these. So the two Big Answers To Purchasing and maintenance…

• a warranty for three years
• proven track recording the student space
  
• nothing that can be pulled off
• has protective bag
• no point of stress eg tablet with only one central hinge
• battery guides so pins cant get bent
• a sturdy mechanism for where the power cable from adapter will go
• 
  

And

• understand the supply chain
• ask for an open book submission which shows cost from manufacturer
• look at what added value they can provide
• will they attend information evenings
• how will they prepare the units for you
• manufacturer has an online knowledge base with forums, usergroups etc
  

Possible scenarios that might make sense

If you do not have on site tech support provide a service where the device can be dropped off at the schools reception desk and picked up by supplier from there.

If you need tech support to be managed by parents the information evenings and

Here is an example of an RFP (request for proposals) that may help you if you want to use one.

Rfp Netbook Template