Bits and Pieces

Just a few quick thoughts that I want to get down before they are lost forever in the abyss..

Today we started to document our screen time - I realised that I was completely carried away with doing exciting stuff on the iPads and forgot about balance. And then, I realised that if I was going home with very tired eyes, then the children probably are as well. And when I asked them, what do you know? Lots of tired eyes in 4LK.. I'm a rocket scientist. Hopefully, we will be able to use the data we collect to inform the students' development of their own schedules for using the iPads - when to leave them at school, when to take them home.. The most exciting upside is that now I 'realise' that I definitely have time to try out some of the cool ideas for Art lessons I've been seeing on this excellent blog, which links to a bunch of others that also look excellent. Hooray!

Choice: this is something I am working to incorporate more into our schedule. This week, we have begun working on two big pieces of learning. The first is the Trip Planner/Maths PBL that I've mentioned in previous posts, the second is the creation of a narrative. One cool thing that has happened is that while most students are working their way through these 'projects', I am able to pull out small groups for focused instruction. The choice comes in because I can make myself 'free' during this time, so that children can elect to come to me when they feel in need of some extra help with a skill or concept, and leave the group when they feel ready. Also, they can choose which project they will do, when. The children have responded well to this and our classroom has been really busy with motivated children doing work that I think feels more purposeful to them.

And lastly, just something that I'm pondering. I got involved in an online discussion with a bunch of people who aren't teachers and their understanding of how teachers and school work was so different to my reality. I know that some of this is to do with perspective and also of course to do with the fact that education varies so much according to time, place, and of course, individual teachers, students, schools and cultures. I wonder how we can be more effective in sharing our work with the wider community?

iPad Trial Phase 1: over?

I think we are now getting past the 'Christmas Present' phase of iPad integration in 4LK. iPads are still exciting, but I am hearing less of 'Miss Kemp, can we play with the iPads now?'.

It has been hard slog - but I am really lucky to work with an excellent Digital Integrator who has been there through all those 'stick-a-fork-in-your-eye' moments, which warrant a post all of their own. If anything, this makes me really aware of the importance of structures to support class teachers in implementing tech in their classrooms. Because this is an action research project, we meet regularly to plan and also have co-teaching time. It is great to have someone to bounce ideas off, talk things through and share the work. Thanks, Ben :).

The children work confidently with their devices now, and we have worked with quite a number of the apps installed. I feel like we are now through 'Stage 1: familiarisation' and are entering 'Stage 2: transformation'. But before I leap ahead, I just want to take a quick look at what we have done so far.

Like I said, Stage 1 (for want of a cooler name, sorry) has been all about familiarisation, getting the students using the iPads regularly, and making the iPads a regular part of teaching and learning in our class. If I look back at the SAMR model of technology integration, most of this stage has (necessarily, I think) been spent on tasks at the Substitution and Augmentation levels, and dipping into Modification. It made sense to me to start integration with these 'lower order' tasks, to give the students (and me) time to work through management issues, sort out initial bugs and work our way through some of the apps. Some examples of things we've been doing so far:

Spelling/Vocabulary development
Quizlet is a flash card app - you can save and share your flash cards with others, as well as access other people's flash cards in a gallery. It's been a nice addition to the options we already have for spelling and vocab practice in class and I can see it being useful as a homework tool, as well. Students can write the vocabulary word on one side of the flashcard and the translation in their mother tongue on the other. The app includes options for games and little tests using your words. Like I said, it's useful as another option and it's a means of making vocabulary words available to students (and their parents) at home.

Edublogs
We have been blogging with laptops since the beginning of the school year, so there's not much new ground being covered here. It is interesting to see how the children's blogs are changing now that most of their blog posts are generated from the iPads. I expected there to be a natural shift to greater use of photographs/illustration and less writing, but that's not what is happening at this stage. Still, though, it's early days - many children are still adjusting to the iPad version of this platform. After a little bit of time, it will be interesting to see what kinds of choices the children make when given the option of using iPads or laptops to update their blogs.

Skitch
Skitch is a cool tool for photo annotation. I liked it a lot on laptops but it is really great on the iPads. The touch screen makes the annotation process a lot less fiddly, as well as the ability to link the app directly to the iPad's camera and camera roll. Thus far, the students have used Skitch to create little informational posters for some of the presentation apps we have. I am hoping that the children will make good use of it for their digital portfolios.

Book Creator
Book Creator is a means for (relatively quickly) creating digital texts that can be shared in a couple of different ways. You can insert photos, video and audio recordings into your books, as well as draw directly onto the page. Sharing via social media is slightly trickier than I would like, but you can upload your books to Google Drive, which is a plus. For their first go with this app, my students published an original poem and easily incorporated the features listed above. This app would be a really great way to create multi-lingual identity texts with ELLs - on my list of things that I am very keen to do.

Screencasting
Screen casting has really been the highlight for me so far. It is a really effective way of having students demonstrate their knowledge for Number. So far, the children have been using Educreations and Show Me to demonstrate their ability to perform calculations - like the chunking strategy for division, or using the grid to solve 2-digit by 2-digit multiplication sums. It is really a really useful assessment tool for me. Again, I have started simple with this - I'm really pleased with what we have done with this so far, but pedagogically speaking, what I have just described is really just a moving, talking worksheet. I have some plans in the works to put screen casting to more inspired use. Stay tuned..

I'm pleased with what we have done in this initial stage. iPads have become a regular tool that we use in our class, but I don't feel like usage has been forced. That said, we are still moving towards SAMR's R - redefinition. I think that part of our journey is to be creative, test things out and realise what the possibilities are. It really is about re-educating, redefining how learning happens in our class. I've spent the last little while working on something to get us a little closer to this goal, which we will begin working on very soon in class.

I have just finished putting together a problem-based learning task for Maths (based on Todd Nesloney's work shared here) that should definitely send us in the right direction. Whilst I say that this is a 'Maths' task, children will have to use a variety of tools (including their iPads!) in order to complete the different elements of the task, drawing on skills from across different areas of skill and knowledge. Hey presto - just like in real life! It should really open up our (mine and my students') eyes to begin to see the potential of us + iPads.

It's a fairly comprehensive task that will take at least a couple of weeks to complete. I'm looking forward to sharing how it pans out.. Wish us luck!

Watch out, blended learning, we're coming!

I don't know how to start this post, so I'm just gonna blurt it out: my class has 1:1 iPads!
Clearly, I am still completely in the 'Whoa, this is so cool!' phase. Which is lucky, because so are my students. Seriously, every day is like Christmas morning.

We've only had the trolley in the classroom for a few days - at this very early stage, we are still sorting out management and logistics, learning our way around this particular piece of hardware, and exploring the apps.

A quick description of the project: each child in my class (and me!) has been issued their 'own' iPad. Initially we'll just use them in class, but we're hoping that the children will be able to take them home after a few weeks.

Over the next months, I will be working closely with the school's Digital Learning Integrator and the Primary School Principal to investigate the effects of iPad use on teaching and learning. Which, on rereading, sounds very dry. What I'm hoping for is a transformation in how learning happens in our classroom. Yep, I'm talking about blended learning. There is heaps of information to be found on the internet about blended learning - I like this video.

Cool! But, how?

There are so many possibilities for the shape this transformation might take: here are a few of my thoughts, dreams and questions.

• iPads become like pencil cases in our classroom: a place where we store a bunch of different tools to help us to solve problems, create, practise skills...
• This is what I'm most excited about right now:
• Transformation of the organisation and differentiation of tasks. We have 1:1 iPads and (most of the time) very good opportunities for access to laptops, as well as two class desktop computers. We have an ample class library and reasonable opportunities for access to the school library. We have good resources for arts and crafts. 
• If we organise our tasks and learning, differently, it follows that iPad integration is going to change how my classroom looks. This is one that I want to play around with a lot more. 

I'm guessing there's an app for that :).

Our blogs are going so well!

My students have achieved well with their blogs this year. We began in the last week of August '13 and quickly attracted comments from around the world. I've also received a number of encouraging emails and comments on the children's work from colleagues at our own school and abroad. It's worth reflecting on what we have done in class this  year to help us along the way.

• First and foremost: Our blogs are open for anyone in the world to read or comment on. Last year, my students' blogs were kept private and commenting privileges were extended only to those within our school community who had a password. Thus our readership started small and dwindled throughout the year. It didn't matter how cool our work was, or even how cool other people (who managed to find our work) thought our work was, because at the end of the day, nobody could remember their password to leave a comment to tell us so! Part of the power of blogging is in its interactivity - the more comments they get, the more children want to write. Important note: All comments are sent to me for moderation before they are visible on the blog.

• Investing time. Blogging was completely new to my students at the beginning of the school year. We spent a lot of time reading blogs, comparing blogs to different kinds of texts we knew about and experimenting with the different features of blogs, as well as developing technical proficiency. This initial unit took about 6 weeks. Now we have one designated lesson per week for writing posts, commenting and responding to comments. Many children also blog from home. Check out Silvia Tolisano's excellent Langwitches Blog for planning and teaching ideas.

• Conceptualising blogging as a 'conversation'. It's really important that the children understand that a blog is an interactive space - not a static one. In our investigations of blogging, we talked a lot about the 'social media' aspect of blogging. A blog is not so much a place we publish as it is a place we have conversations. This understanding feeds into the development of further understandings about digital safety and etiquette, as well as literacy learning in terms of genre and text types. 

• Freedom and flexibility. Giving students control over blog content and layout. It's been really important that it's the children who own their blogs, not me. Whilst the primary purpose of blogging in our class is for reflection and digital portfolios, students also post jokes, stories, informational pieces, opinions etc. Blogs are so versatile - it's a mistake to limit their use to reflection.

• Quadblogging. I signed us up for this at the beginning of the school year and it certainly got our name out into the student blogging community. Even if you don't sign up, it's a great way to see a range of blogs and how different teachers and schools are choosing to blog with or for their students.

Some things to work on/think about:

• One thing that I did expect (that hasn't magically come to fruition) was that my students would edit their work more carefully when they knew that they were writing for an audience (and not just me!). This is something that the literature assured me would happen, and it ain't. 
• Encouraging students to go beyond their own blogs in furthering their 'conversations'. Next time, maybe I will start my blogging unit by having students comment on blogs outside of our school community. Students in my class love to comment on their friends' blogs, but need a quite a bit more prodding to visit and comment on a stranger's blog.
• Blogging with iPads. This is definitely a small part of a much larger conversation. We are incredibly lucky, and have just been issued 1:1 iPads in our class as part of an action research project at our school. As regards blogging, we are still familiarising ourselves with the Edublogs app. It will be really interesting to see what happens next.

Update and the lowdown on using Skitch to give your teacher a 'stache.

It's been a long time between posts.

So, an update...

I am really pleased to write that our Home Learning experiment seems to be over its initial hump and is now definitely on the improve. Children in my class are inquiring into baking Sacher Torte, 'doing the splits', creating their own video games, the life of Anne Frank, skydiving and so many more cool things. Just for me, their teacher, it is so much more interesting than the old 'standard' homework. It is really exciting to see their faces light up when they talk about the progress they've made and what they want to work on or find out more about next. They are keen and excited and want to share. This is what learning should be. I love it.

My students are definitely a lot more comfortable using computers for learning now. They have developed some skills and now get excited (instead of nervous!) about trying out new apps and programs. We spent a blissful couple of periods last week learning to use Google Draw and Skitch and I am looking forward to having the children use them in context.

For those not in the know, Skitch is a photo/image annotation app (great for iPads and laptops) that I'm hoping will be very useful for our digital portfolios this year. It was very much worth the couple of lessons we spent in just experimenting with how these apps work - the children learned so much more when they were free to explore on their own than I could ever have 'taught' them. Can you imagine? 'Right then, click here, and then click there and then - no! Stop that! No drawing boogers hanging out of someone's nose!'

As a very wise and respected colleague once told me - the very best way to make sure that children learn how to use technology is to give them time to play with it on their own. 9 and 10-year-olds have a much more intuitive understanding of 21st century tech than I do. It is inevitable that in the course of these 'play' lessons, at least one of my students will discover and teach me how to do something that I wasn't able to before. It is exciting to have the locus of control shift from me to the students.

To end on a high note:
Here is my own piece of Skitch awesomeness, for your viewing pleasure.
This is the quick demo I did to introduce Skitch to my students. And yes, the teeth and moustache were at their request. Ah, the sacrifices we make for learning.

Home Learning so far...

Home Learning is not turning out to be immediately and automatically strike-me-down amazing. Lesson learned: these things take time. 

I still hold that Home Learning is a cool idea (click here for a great example of how one primary school teacher is implementing it). Kids conducting their own inquiries for homework can only be great. Teachers don't need to tie themselves in knots while we try to dream up something that is related to classwork, quick to do, valuable, doesn't take too long to mark and is not too tedious or stressful for anyone. More importantly, kids finally get the opportunity to choose something that they are excited about/interested in, and spend time working on it. 

Unfortunately for me, it turns out that this is an ideal to aim for, not something that is happening right from the get-go. My current theory is that maybe there is a certain amount of 'unschooling' that needs to occur before the children begin to realise Home Learning's possibilities. They are so used to the processes that are 'homework' (looking in books, talking and writing about stuff written in books, researching stuff on the internet, talking and writing about stuff from the internet...) that they need some time and scaffolding to begin to think outside the box. Now to find the ways to get them there! 

At this early stage, many children are choosing topics for projects - studies of animals and places. Which is great, if that's their passion. There have been lots of opportunities to develop and practice research skills and there has been plenty of growth in learning in that area. The children have been working hard! Even so, I have to be very honest and admit that I do feel a little bit like many of them are going through the motions 'because my teacher told me to', which hurts my heart. Am I asking too much?

Over the next weeks, I really want to work on bringing back the fun - kids inquiring by doing, playing and experimenting, not dusty stuff that teachers give them. Lucky for me, our next unit of inquiry is science-based, so there is plenty of scope for learning through play and experimentation. Hopefully this will help to lend a more practical bent to how Home Learning develops.

I'm still on the lookout for good examples of how Home Learning could work. Here's a link to a high school blog, in which the students are required to post regular reflections on the development of their 20% projects. The structure is slightly different to our approach for Home Learning, but the idea of having the children pursue independent inquiries in areas of their own choice is the same. In terms of the sheer diversity of student inquiry focuses, this really is the epitome of my dream for Home Learning. The students are working on inquiries that range from 'Dealing with Divorced Parents', to 'Crocheting' to 'Learning to code with C++'. Am I expecting too much from my 4th graders to want them to come up with an equally diverse (but of course, age-appropriate) selection? I really hope not.

This teaching thing is HARD

Sadly, my best intentions to write regular posts (full to the brim with reflections on our amazing, inspired, wonderful classroom experiences) have not really come to fruition. The real world of being a teacher can very quickly smack those best intentions down. Fact: only crazy people think that teachers have an 'easy' job. To be honest, at this stage, I can't remember which week of school we're in. 4? 5? It has been nuts.

I spent a lot of time over the summer researching and dreaming about wonderful things to do with my class - coming back to work has entailed a not-so-nice reintroduction to the reality that there is not as much available space for fitting in these well-researched-and-dreamed-of dreams as one would hope. I want to reflect on some of what has passed so far.

Most difficult so far is the return to Earth - remembering that this job involves so much more than working with the children in class. So many pies, so few fingers to stick in them... Day-to-day teaching, learning and assessment, keeping track of emails, website creation and maintenance, liaising with other class teachers, ESL teachers, learning support teachers, other specialist teachers, the school counsellor, staff meetings, professional development courses, preparing for parent-teacher conferences, short-term, mid-range and long-term planning, home learning, steering committees, parent meetings, team meetings, staff meetings, developing goals, author visits, excursions, filling out various forms blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Another downer is that I've decided to postpone using Twitter with my class. Those 140 characters a day turned out to be more than I could cram in from the beginning. I thought that parents would be all over it, but it looks like they're not so into tweeting. This is a bit sad for me as I hoped that using Twitter to communicate with parents would be a good starting-point for Twitter use in our class. I'll have to rethink it. This is fine for now - blogging has provided plenty of fodder for teaching and learning thus far.

After that little whine, I need to write here that my students are amazing. I have a great bunch of lively, interested and hilarious kids to work with every single day. You can see from our class blog that they are a highly talented bunch. I like them all a lot.

I am also very excited by the blogging work the children have done in the last weeks. We started off with a few weeks of working intensively to learn about blogs through reading and writing. This group began the school year with very little to no idea about what a blog is. By week 4, they are writing their own posts and commenting on each others', as well as on other blogs, responding to comments and beginning to insert their own photographs and hyperlinks. The secret of our success thus far, I think, has been that the children made their own choices about the structure and content of their posts. Post titles include 'If you are a noob at Minecraft read this', 'The day in the Aquarium', 'What is an atom?' and 'How to make kids interested in math (for teachers).' It makes for interesting reading and has been a winner for keeping the children motivated to blog. Sadly, it's time to move on now, and while we will continue to blog throughout the year, it is no longer our focus genre.

Remembering to give credit where it's due, I should add that something else that has worked really well has been our involvement in Quadblogging - if you blog (or are thinking about blogging) with your class, check it out.

The children are also learning to use google Drive - at this stage for simple word processing, but very soon they'll be into sharing docs, commenting and embedding work from Drive on their own blogs for portfolios (or blogfolios, if you will, which I won't, because it is an AWFUL word).

Meanwhile, in Maths, we've been hammering away at Number with as many games and hands-on activities as we can fit in, while still making sure we spend plenty of time working on our sums. Last year, I learned to love maths very much but I can't wait to move beyond this beginning-of-the-year intensive focus on place value and number consolidation. At this stage, pattern and the really cool problem-solving stuff is a wistful dream.. That said, this week we've had a brief respite in a couple of wonderful sessions working with symmetry. After weeks of slogging away at digits, sums and symbols, we broke out the paints, pastels, scissors and glue and remembered that Maths is beautiful. I'm looking forward to inquiring into the places we can find symmetry in real life..


Image from flickr: http://flic.kr/p/fQzwPZ Sourced: 27/09/13

Enjoy the wildlife! Happy Friday to everyone!