Reflection About Google Apps for Education - Term 3

So I started the year with a goal to use Google Apps for Education (Docs, Forms, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Blogger etc) as a platform for the delivery of on-line teaching and learning for the children in my class during 2014 to enhance collaboration, engagement and achievement in literacy.

Where am I at now?
This term students have continued to use documents for their own writing tasks as well as collaborating with others on shared projects. Each child has their own blog which is updated each week during reading and writing time depending on their groups task. 

I also wanted to include some of what we learnt in the Sheena Cameron professional development into what we do in class. She showed us the idea of the Word Wall. I decided to make a link on our 5F Blogger page to Padlets (an online way to make word walls). Here are some examples and another . I have found it to be a great way for children to quickly go onto our blog and add new words from the reading they are doing. It also works for Landscape Learning topics as new vocab they come across can be added and meanings can be added too. I have encouraged children to add to other children's words and meanings. I think the Padlet is a really easy way for children to share and discuss new words/vocab they come across and it is accessible when they need it at home or at school. 

The Literacy Shed

Sheena Cameron shared with us a wonderful website called The Literacy Shed. It is filled with thought provoking videos and bits and pieces that are really useful in the classroom.

My class really enjoyed exploring The Music Video Shed. 

We watched one video in particular and stopped at the places it indicated and had discussions. 

Zedd - Stache

The discussion we got from watching this music video was deep and rich. Including music videos in my literacy programme is really bridging the gap between home and school. Kids love music and we more often than not have music playing during our lessons daily. 

If you get time - check this website out. I have only just started so I am excited about what else my class and I will find.

Superheroes - The Script

My class and I are really enjoying this song at the moment. A few of my reading groups are working on making inferences at the moment so we have been doing a lot of activities that require to make inferences. 

Using music videos has been a really good way to explore this and the children are really engaged while doing so.

Visualising

After wonderful professional development with Sheena Cameron this term - I have felt a lot more inspired in my reading and writing programme. Above is a photo of a quick display my class and I put together about visualising technique.

I asked all children to draw a pair of shoes. Those were the instructions. The children wanted more clarification but for the purpose of the activity I didn't give them any more clues as to what to draw. 

At the end I asked all children to sit in a circle on the mat and show the pair of shoes they had drawn. I then asked them to make some observations about what they saw. I recorded their responses. 

In the end the children got the message that everyone visualises things differently even though they were asked to do that same thing. We related this to writing and reading and life in general.

This was a powerful and worthwhile activity!

Google Classroom

Exciting!!!!

GoNoodle

The other teacher I am trialling Google Apps for Education with is always coming across new and exciting on-line resources and this one is FANTASTIC! GoNoodle is a site you can sign up to to encourage your class to take brain breaks! There are dances, songs, activities, calm down breathing and more! The more brain breaks you take the more your character grows! The kids love it. This fits in really well with the P.D done at the start of the year - do don't get a numb bum - take a brain break with GoNoodle!

Digital Citizenship Parent Evening

At this weeks staff meeting we ran through the presentation/discussion that we will be doing with our school parents around digital citizenship. Since we have been having regular discussions with staff along with incorporating digital citizenship discussions into our everyday teaching practice we also think it is important to get our parents in on this too. This on-line world can be one that is tricky to understand for the non digital natives. We want to shed some light on it and get parents thinking about what the on-line world means for their children. We have made a presentation using the haikudeck tool on-line. The run through went well - we have a couple of changes to make but on the whole we had really great feedback.

Digital Etiquette

Digital Etiquette refers to they way you conduct yourself on-line.

This was the topic of conversation at last weeks staff meeting. We showed a video talking about 'netiquette' which explained this in further detail to staff but was also a child friendly resource they could share with the kids in their class. New words came up for discussion such as 'trolls', 'trolling' and 'flame wars'. It is important to go over new terms with staff so they understand the world that their students are participating in daily. 

Digital Access

At staff meeting a couple of weeks ago we raised the topic of digital access with teachers. This is part of the digital citizenship staff meetings we are running that explore the many elements of digital citizenship we should be discussing with our students in this ever growing and important on-line world. 

We wanted the teachers to survey their class about what sort of access they have at home to computers, other devices and also the internet. It was just a simple survey and they were asked to put these numbers onto a Google doc that we have prepared for them. We stressed to them that it was not actually about getting numbers together to do anything with - it was about awareness and discussion. 

Throughout the school it was great to hear about the conversations people were having with their children around the access they have to computers, other devices and the internet. Some teachers were surprised at how many children have access to the internet and that they have many different devices at their finger tips.

We will continue to do 10 min sessions at the beginning of each staff meeting. The buzz and awareness being generated in the school is exciting. 

Oversharenting

While I was at the hair dressers this week I came across this very interesting article exploring the issue of 'oversharenting'. Oversharenting is parents sharing details about their children using social media. How much is too much? I have been thinking a lot about this lately. This article is great food for thought.

Click here to read the article

Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship has become a topic we touch on every day in our class because our programme revolves around the use of Google Apps. 

We are making it a priority in our staff meetings also to get teachers continuously thinking about not only digital citizenship with their students and also their own personal digital citizenship as adults. Interesting rich discussions have taken place around this topic but there is far more to explore and dive into. 

Further to this, I was involved in a thought provoking thread in a mummy's Facebook group I am part of. The discussion revolved around what photos parents post of their children. Some people felt it was fine to share all photos including toilet training, nappy rashes, bath time etc and others (including myself) feel that some consideration is needed as our little people don't yet have a say about what we are posting about them.

I found this picture on-line which illustrates the point really well.

I am constantly thinking about this in regards to the photos I and others post of my daughter on Facebook. She isn't able to tell me what she is OK with me sharing about her. When I was little, all Mum and Dad had were photo albums. Embarrassing photos were only ever shared with people who came over to see the albums. The photos were no where near as accessible as they are today. With a few clicks on the computer photos can now be uploaded into the digital world and are there forever. 

So what sort of digital citizen are you being? What information are you sharing with the world? What is the reason for the sharing? Who can see your personal stuff? What are you privacy settings? 

Don't want to go back - and don't think I could!

After visiting Selwyn College on Thursday, I left feeling great about the work we are doing to improve writing using Google Apps for Education. As I started to reflect, I realised that Google Apps has not only changed the way I organise and teach my class, it has also changed the way I plan and organise myself. This lead me to thinking - I don't want to go back to how I did things before and I don't think I could!

Planning is easier! I have a planning template with all the stuff that doesn't change week to week and then I simply just 'make a copy' of the plan and add in the current weeks details. Everything saves automatically and I can access it no matter what computer I am on as long as there is an internet connection. I am able to check in on children's work and give feedback and feed forward and see what learning I need to address - informing my planning. I have shifted all of my diary onto Google calendars so that I am no longer bound to having to have a paper version of my events. I can also share dates with the children in my class so they can see what is going on in the year.

Children are more involved in class as well as at home. I am getting documents shared with me that are above and beyond what we are doing in the classroom. Some children are writing just because they want to write. Some children are emailing me photos of hobbies they do or they are adding it straight to their blogs and writing about them. 

Again, everything saves automatically!!! No lost work, time or effort - it just makes sense! My students are accountable for the work they are producing. They share documents with each other and use the comment feature to give feedback or feed forward. Things are more seamless because everyone has a Google account. Logging into new apps and websites supported by Google is a breeze. Children don't end up needing to remember password after password. 

I am hooked on Google and looking forward to what else we can achieve this year using it.

Professional Development at Selwyn College

My colleague and I had the opportunity to go to Selwyn College to see how their e-learning journey has gone over the last 5 years. It is always great to get out of your own classroom box to see what others out there are doing. 

We were particularly interested in going to Selwyn College because they started their Google Apps for Education journey last year. It was great seeing older children using the tools that my colleague and I are introducing to the children in our primary classes. It was also great being able to talk to other teachers about their experiences and ideas and sharing our own.

I think it is important to try and do things like this more often and I will endeavour to try to seek more experiences like this in the future. The kids in my class loved hearing about my visit too.

Writing Parody Songs

I love how ideas grow. 

Some boys in my class had an idea of writing a parody song using 'like a drum' (a song we have been singing) and it would be called 'like my Mum'. I think it just started as a joke idea really but we ran with it. We have now written lyrics, sung it as a class and recorded it. We want to then make a music video and then burn it to a cd/dvd. Hopefully it will be a very special surprise for the mother figures in our lives. 

These boys are so happy with how this song has turned out so far - they are inspired to write more song parodies. So watch this space! It might even get posted on this or our class blog!

Manventure Update

So as I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the writing clubs in my class is called 'Manventure'. I was really pleased with a conversation I had with one of my students parents where she mentioned that she is really blown away by the motivation 'Manventure' is creating with the boys. She made a comment that has stayed with me - It's almost like the process of this Manventre thing is more important than the actual end product. This is so true. All of the conversations and engagement in the writing process has been fantastic. These boys are showing other kids their age that writing is cool and that both boys and girls can enjoy it. 

Another great thing to come out of this has been a recent birthday present one of the boys received this week from his 'Manventure' crew - a t-shirt with the groups name on it. This young man got others printed too and decided to give one to a friend (pictured below).

Engagement, motivation, unity and teamwork in the area of Written Language.
I am sure this idea is going to continue to grow.
Regardless on the final result - I am happy with what these young men are getting out of the journey .

Handwriting Versus Typing

Please bear with me a little - these are just my thoughts at the moment and some food for thought...

I have taught many children in my almost 9 years as a teacher and I often come across children who find writing physically difficult. They complain that their hand hurts or that it takes too long. Often in my experience I have found that these children don't lack the ideas or creativity to write amazing stories however the ideas they do have come thick and fast and the pencil just can not keep up. By the time the first word is written down on paper - the story is finished inside their head and it just seems mundane to go back and write the words down. It is true that other tools such as mind mapping or voice recording are other options to capture these children's writing however is there a place for teaching young children to touch type?  

The skills that have helped me not only in my own university schooling but in my career as a teacher have been the skills learnt during the I.T lessons at college. We learnt how to use Word, Powerpoint and Excel as well as how to touch type and even a little bit of game making. Of course this was in the early stages of computers being in schools however these skills have served me well so far in life. I wonder what my parents thought at the time of me being in the I.T class. Did they think typing skills, using Microsoft programmes or game making would have any impact on my future success? Or did they think it was just a fun and light option to take? It is a fact that we are teaching students now for jobs that may not even be invented yet. I think it is not the actual tool but the thought process behind it that is important. Although I learnt to use Word, Powerpoint and Excel I have been able to transfer that learning into using other programmes that came out later on. 

So this brings me to reflect on teaching children skills such as touch typing in today's world. Is handwriting important? Does there need to be a balance? We need to keep in mind that our students still live in a world where they still sit exams in college where they have to write essays and answer questions. This handwriting needs to be legible in order to get marks but does this mean we push these children to write rows and rows of certain letters in order to get the formation right by the time they get to Year 4? Another thought is that without touch typing training, students could be in the same boat as slow handwriting because they will be just as slow with trying to find the keys to type the words.

I have often had these questions in previous years of teaching but because my class is working so heavily with Google Apps this year, I feel that I will be able to measure the impact of teaching touch typing a lot easier. Therefore I have introduced my children to Dance Mat Typing on-line as a starting point. Each child has been given a particular day where instead of doing SSR for 10 minutes after morning tea and lunch time - they go onto the typing programme and practice their typing skills. I will be interested to see how quickly this increases my children's speed at typing and I am also interested in seeing the flow on effect of its assistance with writing stories in written language. Perhaps I could test students on how many words they can hand write in a minute and then compare that to how many words they can type in the same amount of time? And maybe I need to look into signing my students up for a free on-line typing programme where they log in and it records their results?

The more I read about this topic, the more I learn that it is around the Year 4 age that children can cope with learning to touch type - with both co-ordination and hand span. I look forward to seeing what will come of this over the last few weeks of Term 1. I will update you with reflections as I go.

Writing Clubs

Something exciting that has started to happen in my class recently is the formation of 'Writing Clubs'. The thing I find most exciting about this is that children who haven't been that excited about writing before are suddenly showing an interest and are motivated to get together with others to write. 

It all started when a group of boys decided to write a story called 'Manventure'. They created the Google document and shared it to each person in the group. They had meetings about it and discussions about when they would work on it at home. This was something totally student led and has encouraged other students to create writing clubs of their own. One child made a Google form and sent it out to the class asking who would be interested in working with him on a story he wanted to write. Students filled in the form stating what role they would like to take. Some students have put their names down to work in more than 1 club. 

This is just the beginning of the idea and I need to give it some room to grow and see where it takes us. Because we are currently working on narrative writing in Year 4, I have cleared the weeks writing schedule for children to work in their 'writing clubs'. I will keep you posted on their progress.

'Chatting' while Working

The most loved function of Google Docs in my class this year has definitely been chat. My students get so excited to open chat in their documents. Although chat can also become a distraction if not used in the correct way - the pro's far out way any con's. Students are able to ask others questions in real time while they are working - this could be to do with how to spell a word or what to do next in their work. They can also chat to me if they are not in the same room as I am. 

My students have also already learnt a lot of digital citizenship while using chat. At first when chat was just a novelty - children would often type 'hi' or insert a smiley face. Now however after many reflections and discussions we have refined what is acceptable chat behaviour. We have still got some work to do of course and this will continue as students get more capable and daring or learn new things.

Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship is more important now than ever. It is relevant everyday in my class as we are busy using Google Apps for Education. 

NetSafe defines a New Zealand digital citizen as:

• being a confident and capable user of information and communication technology (ICT)
• using ICTs to participate in educational, cultural, and economic activities
• using and developing critical thinking skills in cyberspace
• being literate in the language, symbols, and texts of ICTs
• being aware of ICT challenges and can manage them effectively
• using ICT to relate to others in positive, meaningful ways
• demonstrating honesty and integrity and ethical behaviour in their use of ICTs
• respecting the concepts of privacy and freedom of speech in a digital world
• contributing and actively promotes the values of digital citizenship
  
  
  

I found the following posters on http://thebookfairygoddess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/digital-citizenship.html which I think are really valuable to use with the children. There are lots of other ones out there. I think it could also be a useful task to get children to create their own digital citizenship characters in order to teach other children around the school about how to be safe on-line and act responsibly.

A bit of background about my major goal this year:

OUR OBJECTIVE:
This year my colleague and I are trialling the use of Google Apps for Education (docs, forms, spreadsheets, presentations) as a platform for the delivery of on-line teaching and learning for the children in our classes during 2014 to enhance collaboration, engagement and achievement in literacy.

Why Google Apps for Education?:
As a school we have moved into using more of what Google has to offer in order to collaborate effectively and efficiently on planning, meeting minutes, daily notices, organisation, surveys etc and we know it will work well in the classroom as well. In addition Wakaaranga School takes a cooperative learning approach (Kagan) and we believe using Google Apps will work well alongside this.

We are also interested in exploring the ‘paperless classroom’ model which supports Wakaaranga Schools dedication to being a Green/Gold EnviroSchool. Dave Kinane has also been involved in preparing our school for this and we believe that to identify how this will work for the school it should be trialled first.

2014 Google Apps for Education Journey

I got sent an interesting article today called 'How to Ace Your Interview for a Teaching Position', and it got my colleague and I talking about how we document our professional journey as teachers - especially since he and I are trialling the use of Google Apps in our Year 4 and Year 6 classes this year. We have tried so many new things this year and had a lot of really important and rich conversations around what we are trying that it would be a real shame not to document it. We have made a lot of ground already but will be posting our thoughts on certain things now as we go through the year.