Third South African GAFE Summit 2016...things I will take with me

I recently attended the summit, hosted by Parklands College in Cape Town (Thank you +Parklands College Secondary Faculty for the excellent conference) and have, as I often do, decided to write about the top things I took away from the event.

1) +Jennie Magiera's keynote on allowing student to progress through failure really resonated. I have, over the past few years tried to incorporate an aspect of deliberate 'failure' into my lessons. The point being that failure leads to the gaining of knowledge on a far broader spectrum than simply the ability to answer a test question.

What worries and astounds me is that often parents are not willing to allow their children to experience failure of any sort. We need to step back and allow the child to develop the resilience needed to cope with life.

Teachers also need to allow failure in their lessons, however we cannot and should not accept mediocrity. The story of 'Austin's Butterfly' reinforces what is possible when we expect more from children.

2) Screencastify: Just...WOW! Thank you +Holly Clark for this one.

3) The teachers: and their sheer enthusiasm and excitement for learning. The 'jazz hands', the applause for new things, the fact they stayed until the last keynote, all of it!

4) WikiTube: this was one of the extensions I presented. The ability to see YouTube above a Wikipedia search is like tech magic!

5) The rebirth of Google Drawings: As a few of the presenters mentioned Drawings is the lost cousin of the GAFE toolset. What we forget is that many students find drawing easier than writing. +Jennie Magiera used the revision history to illuminate a students thought process and provide insight into their choices and changes. Check out her site for more.

6) Sharing: Everyone who presented at the conference was more than willing to put resources, ideas and links on the conference site for everyone to access and use. Thank you all for this valuable resource.

7) The Omnibox: So much more than just search box. A calculator, currency converter, specialist research tool, event creator and more. Use the omnibox tips and hints.

8) Google Classroom: This is by far my favourite tool in the GAFE toolbox. One thing that I try to emphasize is that Classroom is NOT a LMS, it is a workflow management tool or a document management tool and as such it is peerless. The continued updates and upgrades, based on teacher input are making it indispensable in my classroom.

Here is and excellent post on the strengths of classroom by +Tom Mullaney : Google Classroom is not an LMS. It's better!

All in all the conference, once again, passed expectations. Thank you to everyone who taught, shared, talked and attended.

Thank you for reading this.

Book Creator: the Panacea App?

Over the past few years I have had the privilege of being a beta-tester for the Book Creator App.

It all started with a reach-out via twitter to Dan Amos who created the app. Soon after I was invited to join the book creator basecamp. A place where teachers and users could contribute idea's and solutions in order to improve the overall experience of book creator.

The app has come a long way!

Initially an iOS only ePub app the team at Book Creator have continued to push the boundaries of the app. Nowadays it is a cross platform publisher that is easily used by students across the ages.

In fact at my school I have seen it used by 5 -16 year olds, each in their own unique way. The ease of use and familiar controls make using the app a breeze.

Some examples I have seen done at my school or used by myself are:

1. 13 year old students creating 2nd language readers for 7 year old students. Using a little trick that allows the younger student to have the book read to them by touching the writing. (PS thanks @Joe_Moretti for that one)
2. Project progress reports at age 12/13 level. The reports include research interviews, photos and video's of progress, reflection, feedback and self-assessment.
3. Instruction booklets for Lego Robotics. The students were required to design a complex machine and then create an instruction booklet for younger students. The feedback loop for this project was extraordinary as students got to see whether the instruction they created made sense and, often, they had to go back and add steps or explanations.
4. Age 7 research projects. A book created on a specific topic presented by Grade 2 students.
5. Age 5 my holiday projects (This one is by my own daughter #proudfather).

However, more important than the uses the app has is the ease of sharing. Book creator allows a student of teacher to share book in 3 ways:

1. As an editable ePub (and therefor into the ibooks store)
2. as a PDF
3. and, amazingly, as a video

Once an option is chosen the student is able to share into any app that allows 'open in...', including Showbie, Google Drive, Dropbox, mail, messages, Evernote, Box and dozens of others. This makes book creator extremely versatile.

Once the book is shared, teachers and other students can download them to read or to add to their own book by combining existing books. 

One thing is for sure, if it's not the actual panacea the book creator app is as close as it comes currently.

Version 4.0 gets even better with comics!! Red Jumper Studios haven't yet sat on their laurels. Don't expect them to do that soon either.

GAFESummit 2014

WOW!

What a busy 2 days of learning and networking (Both physically and in a 'internet' sense). It was brilliant to see what was happening all over the school.

Thank you to all the delegates who attended and a special thanks to all the presenters, both featured and local!

So, in keeping with my '10 things' vibe, here is what I will take from the Summit 2014:

1) YouTube is huge and getting bigger!

Starting with youtube.com/edu which collates education videos on the regular youtube.com, to the personal youtube channels and then the video editor Youtube continues to redefine itself as an educational smorgasbord!

2) IFTTT

One presentation and a demo slam confirmed that the time of IFTTT has arrived. If you haven't explored it now is the time!

This brilliant tool allows a user to create 'receipes' (or just use the ones other people have shared) to manage and maintain the internet of things.

3) Chrome Extensions

Little tools that make life simpler, look around to find the ones you like and make chrome work for you!

My favourites are CheckerPlus for Google Calendar, Docs Quickly, TabCloud (My personal best extension!) and OneTab which come a close second.

Just remember that with the pace of internet development these do change often.

For more extensions for education check out this doc: 50+ Chrome Extensions for Educators
with permission from Jake Duncan

4) Google+

Dee Lanier did a workshop on Google+, and this platform is growing fast. Time to get involved:

Check out Dee's resources on his doc or get involved in the new Google Educators Group South Africa

5) It not about the app!

Many sessions talked to the idea that we need to concentrate on ensuring that our teaching is solid and not based on teaching the app but rather the Child (Adult?). There seems to be a move towards ensuring that the pedagogy is correct before we concentrate on the technology. This will ensure that lessons are designed to stimulate and grow the knowledge and enthusiasm of both teachers and students!

6) Paperless

Not only is the conference paperless (although some felt uncomfortable with this) but Glenn Jones of Western Province Prep School presented a session on using scripts to enhance the paperless classroom. This is definitely a growing trend and it will be interesting to see how teachers adapt to a paperless classroom.

7) Personalisation

The growing trend for people to choose different devices for different uses makes it vital that the 'internet' works for the individual and for each student and teacher. The trend is to customise the experience for each individual and allow them to decide how to make things work for them.

8) Gamification

With badges, both electronic and stickers, handed out throughout the conference, the trend towards gaming the classroom has grown over the past year. Helen Robertson the Content Coordinator at Mindset Network did a great presentation on planning and preparation for the gamified classroom.

9) Custom Searching

One tip I picked up was on how to create a custom search engine for use on a blog or in class. Sean Hampton-Cole, who is Edtech Integrator / Senior Teacher at Crawford College Lonehill, shared a whole bunch of resources for his talk and among them are the instructions to set up a custom search engine

10) The people

Once again, the greatest buzz from #gafesummit was the time I spent talking to and networking with teachers from all over South Africa and the world. Thank you all for coming to Dainfern College and see you next year!

For the lowdown check out https://storify.com/ajegbers/gfesummit-za

2nd Language on a Tablet

Over the last few weeks I have been asked, by a few teachers at school, to help them plan second language lessons using a tablet.

Ideally a tablet or computer should not be the focus of a lesson plan but rather an aid to the completion of a task. I, therefore, asked the teachers what topics they were planning on covering and the time-frame (in terms of lesson time) we had to cover the topic.

In collaboration with the teachers, and taking the content and time-frame into account here are some of the idea's we came up with:

1) Comic to written work

From           to      

App Smashing is the new thing! So using this as an idea step one will be to get the students to create a photo comic book. In this comic (which they are allowed to create in their first language) the students will have to act out a story and photograph the action. Then they add the dialogue in the form of speech bubbles and captions.

Once the dialogue is complete it will be translated into the second language using Google Translate (As pointed out by another teacher, it is not always advisable to translate whole sentences, rather use translation apps to translate words. Thanks, Nicole!) and everyday dictionaries. This should allow the students to relate new second language words to their first language context.

In step 2 the completed comic will then be published and used as the basis for a written dialogue:

Ben: "Hello!"
Fred: "Hello, how are you?"

During this part of the project the teachers will focus on using and correcting punctuation and grammar in the second language. They will discuss similarities and differences between punctuation and grammar in the first and second languages and the students will, hopefully, start to understand proper punctuation and grammar usage in the second language.

Once the dialogue is complete the student will have 2 pieces of work that are the same content in different formats.

Step 3 will use both of these in aiding a 'formal' piece of written work in the form of a descriptive essay. The comic will be used to aid the student in describing the scenes (using the pictures the students themselves created) and the dialogue will be fitted in at the appropriate places in the story. This can be done in first language and translated but ideally the previous 2 steps should have the students ready to write in their second language.

This process is expected to take 4-5 hours and comprises 3 formative assessments, later on the students will write a story independently for a summative assessment.

2) A story in 3 tweets




This can be done on or offline, on twitter or not but the idea remains the same. Students have 3 tweets to tell a story (140 characters if offline) and must compose a beginning, a middle and an ending to their story.

This should be helpful to students who are just starting the second language writing journey as it allows them to be very specific and concise.


3) Class story in tweets

                   or             



This exercise needs an online environment via a back-channel app such as todaysmeet or twitter. If you are using twitter please remember a hashtag, and check to see that it isn't being used elsewhere!

Working together each class member contributes 1 'tweet' to a class story. The teacher then uses storify for twitter or copy and paste for todaysmeet and other similar sites and then publish the results as a story.

I will add to this post as we try new things, feel free to share some of your idea's with me or let me know if you try any of these in class. I would love to know how it went!!

Getting Students going on a Tablet

Wow! it has been a while since I blogged.

At my school we have been running a BYOT (tablet) programme for two years. This involves both the Grade 6 (11-12 year old) and Grade 7 (12-13 year old) students.

I our first year we struggled to get the grade 6 students up to par with using the Tablets in class and so in January 2014 we implemented a Tablet licence for these students. The idea was to use Edmodo to introduce the students to the schools workflow solution, to introduce them to working on a tablet and to make sure they all had the required apps in order to use a tablet effectively at school.

To start the process we used a Google Doc to get input from all the Grade 6 teachers and create an outline to follow in order to ensure that we covered all our bases. At the end of this process we had 30 major items that every student needed to be aware of in order to use their tablet properly. These were then grouped into Modules or learning tasks.

1. Create an outline document for your schools work flow

Once we had the modules we needed to find a way for students to access them, without having tablets at school.

For this part I decided to run the licence via Edmodo, firstly because we use Edmodo at school and secondly because the students need to be comfortable using Edmodo to both receive tasks and to hand in completed work. The first step was to create a group that the students could join:

Create a group

After that I created modules for each student to complete. The licence is self-paced and open to all Grade 6 students. I started by loading to Assignments (Modules) each week. The module below used commonsense Media's Digital Passport to introduce the students to sensible online behavior.

3. Set assignments that cover your content

Once a student finishes a module to my satisfaction they receive a badge to show that they have completed the specified task.

4. Award your badges as work is completed

In this case once a student had earned the first 9 badges they were allowed to bring a tablet to school. This signals the start of part 2 of the licence which will show students how to use their Tablet in class. The 'Whoo Hoo' badge signaled the specific students permission to bring a Tablet to school, get the key to their Tablet Locker and start using the Tablet in classes.

5. Hand out the licence

Part 1 on the licence covered the following 'modules':

1. The schools Acceptable Use Policy.
2. Digital Citizenship.
3. Password Management (Security of and remembering their passwords)
4. Email etiquette
5. Email Setup (Labels and filters)
6. Edmodo assignment turn in.
7. Google Calendar.
8. App/Play/Windows store account setup
9. Social Media safety
10. App readiness (in terms of getting all the recommenced apps for school)

Over the course of administering this process the main problems I had were:

1. with keeping up with the administration of the modules (96 kids and 11 assignments so far, with 12 to go) 
2. keeping all the students on track on a self-paced project. The issueing of  the first few 'licences' did help though.
3. handing out the badges. As of now Edmodo has no way of automatically awarding a badge with a pass mark (Would love it if more people suggested this as a future feature for the Edmodo developers)

At the end of it all this licence has empowered the students in terms of knowing what is expected of them once they have a tablet at school. The teachers are more comfortable with the fact that students have tablets because they know that they are able to assign tasks and use the tablets in class knowing that the students are prepared for this sort of teaching.

Phase two of the licence start in May and I will do another post on how that goes. This part will cover:

1. Setting up the tablet
2. It's crashed, now what?
3. Backing up and restoring the tablet and work on the tablet.
4. Reading on the tablet (Kindle, iBooks and others. Also looking at the differences of the various formats, PDF, ePub etc)
5. It’s safe! Safety and security of the Tablet. Including having a cover, using the school lockers and tracking the device.
6. General classroom rules an the Tablet AUP.

A year in review or 10 Things I learned this year

As usual, when a year draws to a close, people look back over the previous 12 or so months and reflect on opportunities or misses. I am looking back to record what I learned this year in terms of training, BYOD and staff and pupil development. I am starting to enjoy these '10...' posts so you can expect more:

1). Everyone learns at their own pace...

...and sometimes, as a trainer, we need to accept that. Along with this goes the provision that some people will not want to learn what we prescribe. This goes for adults and children. As teachers and trainers we need to 'hook' a person by showing the possibilities of a technology and not necessarily the end point. At school we call it a 'technological journey' that every staff member is on and we try to help them along their own path rather than a path we have chosen. As a teacher I believe that we need to do the same for our children. In my view this is the only way to create a lifelong learner, a child or adult who studies for the love of learning and not just for tests and exams.

2.) Technology can help us do this.

It allows a teacher the space to differentiate, set multiple projects on the same theme, or just give the children time to learn their own thing or in their own way. To this end I tried a very short version of 20% time after reading 10 Reasons To Try 20% Time In The Classroom and gave the students a project that was self directed and self paced but had the underlying premise of looking at the technology behind their favourite hobby, sport or passion.

3). Google knows everything but can't teach it!

It is up to the teacher to teach children how to research, analyse and interpret the things Google can tell them.

4).Google is awesome

After attending the GAFESummit in Cape Town (Here is my post on that: 10 things I will be taking from the za.gafesummit.com) I decided Google was awesome. Not for the content but for the technologies it drives or associates itself with, either through the 20% time they give their staff or from a passionate group of educators and developers around the world. There is a passion for education that is at the core of Google and that it shares with a large group of educators around the world.

Oh! and the Loon project, Google is awesome because of the Loon project!! (Project Loon)

5).Apple is awesome...

...and especially the South African Apple team at ThinkAhead who constantly strive to show the power of technology in the classroom. As a BYOTablet school we have had to lean on their knowledge all through the year. Best of all we have been able to teach them too, with neither side worried about ego's or point scoring.

6). Put them together and a classroom is awesome!

IMHO, my situation would not work without the combined resources of Google and Apple, both in terms of technology and cloud computing. With a growing Google Apps ecosystem on all tablets and the ease of use of the Apple devices our school has been able to push the limits of what students are capable of in terms of technology and learning. I no longer have to draw information from unwilling minds, the student is able to show their ideas and knowledge in so many forms that it is possible for every student to show their knowledge.

7). Creative Commons Search

I have written about this before but it is just so useful I put it in again!

8). Content Creation Apps

Along with many others I have moved away from content delivery apps and towards the apps that allow a student to create something of their own abd share it with someone else. Especially useful for this type of teaching and learning is the Book Creator App and I would like to thank +Dan Amos for the opportunity to be a part of the development and testing of the latest version of this app (and good luck with the Android launch!), it just gets better and better. Other useful apps include ExplainEverything, iFiles, Edmodo and Dropbox. Each of these have helped with our schools workflow solution. Speaking of which...

9). Workflow Solutions

every school must have one, especially in terms of effective assessment and learning. Also, every school needs to find on that suits their style and philosophy. Very often 'pre-packaged' solutions just don't cut it!
So...find a way that suits your school and don't delay because you are unsure. Rather be flexible, apologise for mistakes and accept feedback and criticism then act on it.

10). 10 things posts

I have really enjoyed this type of post, both as a writing style and for reading. I find the idea of a list to work through or a list to create allows me to pick and choose what I find valuable. Edudemic.com uses this style of blogging often and very effectively.

Lastly, Thank you to everyone who read my posts this year. Next year is a year of comments, so feel free to leave yours!

SchoolNet Blending the flipping classroom presentation

Blending the flipping classroom presentation for SchoolNetSA presentation 2013

Future technology and the IT industry

On the first day of term the school’s teaching staff was privileged to have Fred Baumhardt, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Microsoft South Africa, as a guest speaker. In a speech entitled “2016 and beyond”, Fred took the time to show our staff the amazing technology that already exists and will soon become affordable (Every year the price of a new technology decreases by approximately 10 times!). Many of the amazing technologies we were introduced to will be available within the next few years.

Fred showed us a world where connectivity was an everyday occurrence and a person’s ability to access information was unlimited. More importantly, he explained how this connectivity was already available, although the costs associated with staying connected were still, at times, exorbitant. He pointed out that as time passes this cost is decreasing worldwide and we, as teachers, parents and students need to take advantage of the abundance of information available to us. We need to train students to understand this abundance of information, to be able to use it effectively through research, to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of the information we find and, finally, to be able to analyse the content objectively.

This Utopian view of technology has to be balanced by an acknowledgement of the weaknesses of the hardware and software available to us, the need to have an ecosystem that supports its use and a confession by Fred that the IT industry as a whole have not come to the party in regards to education and its very specific needs.

Until now the IT industry has sold solutions that they have developed to support the software they have developed to be used by people who understand how to use the hardware and software as a unit. The attitude was, and in many times still is, one of ‘fire and forget’. Each user was expected to adapt their systems to fit the hardware and software that was already available. This was especially apparent in the Education field. Schools built networks to support the needs of the organisation without much input from the providers of the hardware and software. There was no concerted effort to develop solutions for education. In general, the money was not made in the education field.

This lack of partnership between providers and users has led to a vast variety of ‘solutions’ for educational institutions and each school has had to choose their own path. At this point we need to acknowledge the efforts any school network 'guy' who manged, in spite of the providers, the development of a stable, sustainable and, maybe most vitally, upgrade-able network for their school. As Fred mentioned this has been done, in many cases, despite the IT industry rather than because of it.

Things are changing!

More and more both hardware and software providers are looking at delivering a unified system to Education institutions. These technological ‘Ecosystems’ are been designed to facilitate the process of skills acquisition rather that the sales of software or hardware. Each school will have an ‘App’ that will govern hardware policy, software deployment and who can access which part of the network. This ecosystem will adapt to the varying needs of each school and, therefore, no solution will be the same.

More importantly, each individual will have their own ‘ecosystem’ which may not be the same as the school they attend. The schools system will then have to adapt to and incorporate the individuals’ choices and also support those choices.  The next big step for both education and IT will be to allow open access to the systems that allow for effective and open communication in the hope that teaching and learning will grow from this openness.

In the hour that we spent with Fred we heard and saw things that both shocked and amazed us. If you are interested in seeing some of what we saw have a look at the following videos.  All the technology in them already exists and will be available commercially in the very near future!

Questions from Maggie!

Just a few questions.....

Was there a great uptake by parents to come to the training session? 

We planned for around 40 families from the beginning, the sessions ended being around 20 families. This isn't too disappointing because this was for the very basics of iPad use and many people already use an iPhone or iPad device. Future sessions will include discussions on the 'Flipped or blended' classroom models, How creation apps work and the move away from content, a discussion on Blooms and how the Tablet allows teachers to work with higher order thinking, and how the parent can use the tablet to promote reading and analyses skills.

You say that you will do the same for other devices.....which forces me to ask the question of what is the breakdown of BYOD in the school?

We have a BYOT strategy, T being for tablet, and we allowed the use of any tablet the family chose. Generally about 95% have chosen the iPad and the rest have an android Tab (we only have 2 Slates in the school). 

We did recommend the iPad to parents due to it's 'safer' (or 'closed', depending on your point of view!) app environment, however as a group we decided that to make a choice for a family would be against our IT committee's open platform policy. This did mean a long discussion and some hard debate!


Strategies for getting the teachers on board of coping with different devices in the classroom?

Simply...I have been given the time to spend with teachers, we ask them to plan lessons that require the student to create content on the Tablet and not specifically use an App to deliver content. Occasionally they might need a specific App, in which case the students without the specific app share an iPad or Tablet with another student. We have found that most Apps are available on both platforms (and many have websites that can be accessed and used on-line).

In order to help the teacher we have made the scheme voluntary for the first term of 2013 (until May) after which every child is required to have a Tablet of some sort. All we require of the teachers is to use the tablet occasionally in class, even if it's just a textbook or novel to read. At the same time we are training the teachers how to use the tablet and getting them to understand that how content is delivered by the student is not important but rather what is in the content should be judged. We have some teachers who's adage is 'I just let the kids teach me!' and that is possibly the best strategy we could hope for!

Hope this helps Maggie!

Baby Steps...

What a week!

The process of loading and using apps, creating app and play store accounts and generally just getting going has been a slow but exciting process!

The amazing thing is how the kids have got on board, there is no fear for them when it comes to Tablet devices, to use a Steve Jobs Quote:

"Older people sit down and ask, 'What is it?' but the child asks, 'What can I do with it?'...

and boy have they asked a lot!

We spent the week downloading many of the apps I talked about last week, the kids have managed to find the best WiFi hotspots in the school and it's great to see them congregating around a teacher getting a new app. 

More importantly though we have started using the devices in classes, in the latest lesson I asked the grade 6's to take notes of what I was teaching (Design and Technology - Structures), but allowed them to choose how to take these notes and which app they preferred to use. The variety astounded me. Key notes, sound recordings, mind maps, 'Haiku Deck' (A new app to me but one that now has a place on my iPad!) , a word doc with pictures and just good old notes app were all used and emailed to the person next to them. Some even put their notes in the Kindle app to save them.

The Grade 7's were emailed my iBook of the terms notes and its all go from Monday.

All in all a great week!

Week 2 2013 - Apps, Apps, Apps?

As the second week of the journey starts we are looking at appropriate apps for Tablets.

Most Students have opted for the iPad as their choice of device, however we do need to cater for the Android and Windows market. Just to note that the students are required to manage their own devices and apps.

As a school we believe in using the Tablets to create content and not as consumer devices and so we are recommending the following sorts of apps:-

Type of App	iPad	Android
Presentation	Keynote	Quick Office
Word processing	Pages	Quick Office
Spreadsheet	Numbers	Quick Office
Movie making	iMovie	Movie Aid, AndroVid Video Trimmer
Mind mapping	Popplet	SimpleMind
Word clouds	Tag cloud	(Not sure)
Tracking apps	Find my iPhone	Prey
Annotation	Good notes, notability, skitch	Skitch
Browser	Safari, Chrome	Chrome
File Sharing	Dropbox, Box, iFiles	Dropbox, Box
Research	Qwiki, HowStuffWorks	TellMeAbout, HowStuffWorks
Books	iBooks, Kindle	Kindle
Drawing/Writing	Bamboo Paper	Bamboo Paper

There is also an iPad app called Pocket (read it later) that will allow students to view web content offline at home, I really hope the equivalent exists for Android or Slate, remembering the Windows Slate is still very new and we have started research on matching apps for these devices.


The most exciting part of all this is the excitement and ownership of the students, they are not only getting on board but are already finding, and using, alternatives that are cheaper or free.

Lets hope the excitement continues!