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.

GEG South Africa...and all it's branches

Whoop, Whoop! GEG Dainfern launched today.

GEG Dainfern founder members

'Google Educator Groups. Learn. Share. Inspire. Empower.' is the calling cry of GEG's all over the world.

Recently the GEG program was launched in South Africa. With local partners SchoolNetSA and a group of enthusiastic and dedicated leaders and trainers Google hopes to establish and maintain a training and development program that could change the way teachers and schools approach technology.

According to Google:

'Google believes that the best inspiration to educators are other educators. It is for this reason that Google helped start a community of passionate educators, who bring the benefits of technology to schools, classrooms, and communities across the world.

GEGs provide a platform for educators to collaborate with one another, allowing them to pick up new creative ideas from one another, and to help each other best meet the needs of their students with Google solutions. GEG activities take place both online and offline. Online GEGs provide a space for educators to discuss together and learn about one another through Google+; offline, locally run events and workshops are a way to learn and share face to face.

Anyone is very welcome to join GEG. You may be a principal, a school administrator, a professor, a student, or just someone interested in using Google products to help people learn. Each group is organised by a local volunteer (GEG leader) and is entirely independent from Google, the corporation.'

This means that although Google provides resources, in terms of tools and training, it has no influence on the direction and thoughts of the GEG participants.

But what does this all mean? Does a GEG just talk Google, are they limited to what Google provides. In short, no, I do not believe this.

GEG's are device and platform agnostic (although GAFE helps), they admit anyone who is interested and do not look at background, means or even connectivity. The idea is to embrace #edtech and run with it.

What Google have foreseen is a rapidly changing world in which teachers and schools need to adapt to changes on an ongoing basis. The GEG is designed to be a place where teachers receive training and advice that provides the tools they need to cope in a modern classroom. One where knowledge is empowered by the use of research, analysis and critical thinking around any given topic. A place to share ideas on teaching philosophy, on networking (both physical and social) and on being in the classroom.

The best thing so far about the process of establishing a GEG is the training I have had the opportunity to receive. A mad weekend of getting to know 25-30 passionate teachers and administrators from around South Africa (Abrie Pepler,  Nomusa Keninda, Anthony Peters and so many others), a Google+ community that is growing fast and provides solid advice and discussion on a variety of topics and a local group of teachers from Crawford's Fourways, Lonehill and Italia, St Peters School,  Dainfern College, Cedarwood School and Rivonia Primary.

What I look forward to is getting more schools involved. The more the merrier. No-one 'owns' a GEG and they can evolve, split and reconvene, as long as the needs of the teachers are met.

Over the next few months a network of GEG's should be established around South Africa, take the opportunity and join one. It might change the way you teach!

Thanks to all the teachers who were present. If you are interested please contact me to join. We are especially keen for government schools to join us. So far there is only one.

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!!

10 things I will be taking from the za.gafesummit.com

On the 26th and 27th of September I was privileged enough to attend the first South African/African Gafesummit in Cape Town. Held at Parklands College (Thanks Guys, awesome conference) the conference was Google exemplified!

Parklands and Schoolnetsa invited the http://www.edtechteam.com/ to present the conference and the team blew us away with their knowledge and energy, considering many of them flew in from all over the world I am sure that energy was hard to find.

The sheer amount of learning made this conference, in my opinion, the best conference I have been to this year.

So what did I take away form the conference besides some new people to follow on twitter (@followmolly, @scubagirl812, @rushtonh and @markwagner among many others) and Google+?

Well, lets try narrow it down to 10, starting with some observations and then some cool tech:


1) Amazing Video's

In every presentation there was a video to make you think! What it brought home was the power of a video used in the right place at the right time. As teacher we tend to see you tube as a time waster (and it can be, I just spent 10 minutes following recommended links) but to our students it allows entry to a world of knowledge.

2) Sheer Enthusiasm!

Over the 2 days of the conference there wasn't a moment where the teachers were not talking, connecting, sharing ideas or just plain whooping at new ideas and technology that just blew us away.

3) Boomerang

...and it's pal The Email Game, both brilliant and both so simple. If you haven't already you really need to check them out! The goal is inbox zero (9000 odd to go, wish me luck). (boomeranggmail.com)

4) 45 tips for Google Apps for Education

A short presentation by mark Garrison that gave so many new ideas that I had to read it over and over.

5) Flubaroo

Self marking Google forms, what could be better. Well, emailing the results automatically at the same time!!

6) Maps Engine Lite

Customised maps of anything on earth. @scubagirl812 showed us how to bring Google Maps to life. Although I had heard and seen this before it was brilliant to see how much could be done. This session was so inspiring that you could nearly hear the new teaching idea's popping into people's heads.

7) Productivity

Dozens of tips and tricks provided by @markwagner to make Google Apps work faster for you (and other program's as well). I especially liked my introduction to AlternativeTo.net which gives, you won't believe it, alternatives to favourite pieces of software for various platforms.

8) http://search.creativecommons.org/

Thanks to @rushtonH for this, all creative commons resources all the time! This search engine along with the Google reference tool that can be switched on in Google Doc (Tools --> Research) are very powerful for everyone who is concerned about plagiarism, did anyone say Matric?

9) Customisation

What I was most reminded of during the conference is just how flexible Google is. It is, at heart, designed to try and make every individuals life easier. Tell it how you like to do things and it just does them. Even better, Google is starting to figure out things for you. The seamless integration across technologies and platforms is just brilliant.

10) The Demo Slam

Great staff development tool, each teacher presents an idea for 3 minutes. Best is it can even be used outside of 'tech' and just to blast several idea's at one sitting. I loved it and well done to @KShermanTweets for the outstanding win. Big applause by the partisan local crowd.

All in all this was a brilliant experience. What struck me most (even above the 10 things I took from the conference) was just how easy it is to customise Google for each user's needs. Every teacher, IT guy and 'other' at the conference could probably write a completely different but just as relevant and exciting '10 things' list. If you do please let me know about it, i would love to read it!

SchoolNet Blending the flipping classroom presentation

Blending the flipping classroom presentation for SchoolNetSA presentation 2013

SchoolNet BYOT presentation 2013

Bring your own device presentation for SchoolNet conference 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!

Blending or Flipping?

The rise of technology in the classroom has given impetus to two major trends in the average or above average (depending on your point of view) classroom or lesson.

The question is how to make this change effective?

At a recent conference I (briefly) presented a talk on flipping and blending the classroom, during the preparation for that talk I did a bit of research on the exact definitions of the two models. The conclusion of most of the sites that I visited was that the change must happen and is happening in many schools and tertiary institutions but that there is not really a common consensus on what both models are or how best to use them.

Picture from Wikipedia

Lets start by looking at the blended classroom:

This type of classroom combines 3 types of learning to try and achieve a model of learning that allows different types of learners to access information in a way that they are comfortable with. In other words, "The goal of a blended approach is to join the best aspects of both face to face and online instruction. Classroom time can be used to engage students in advanced interactive experiences."(http://weblearning.psu.edu). It further allows students to access information at their own convenience and at their own pace.

To help explain I found a great little video.

I, personally, love the idea of a blended learning model and see many benefits for students in an institution that has the scope to provide the material in various ways. The video describes it as a cheaper way to educate people but that, i would guess, depends on the quantity of people who access the material (UNISA are you reading this!)

And then the Flipped classroom:

I love this explanation! Watch it and you will understand why I am not going to say any more. PS I don't just use video's to explain things in my classroom.

The flipped classroom lets the students gain 'content' at home and then arrive at school to develop that knowledge through teacher facilitation.

In other words we take the cognitive development aspect of learning out of the parents hands and put it back in the hands of the people who are trained to do it. This might also, hopefully, lead to a recognition of the true skill of an educator. Their ability to engage a disparate group of kids and make them want to learn.

Finally the question must be: How do we use these models to enhance learning in our own classrooms?

Some teachers who have been doing this longer than me gave the following tips (Commentary by me):

(http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/01/23/6-expert-tips-for-flipping-the-classroom.aspx)

1) Use existing technology to ease faculty and students into a flipped mindset.

Don't expect every teacher to be immediately comfortable with using either of the models. Encourage then to try it in a controlled way. Baby steps...

2) Be up front with your expectations.

The more honest you are  the more successful the change will be. Use examples to show how it works and, maybe most importantly, let them know that it won't work properly every time!

3) Step aside and allow students to learn from each other.

Probably the toughest part of the process for the 'traditional' teacher. We need to step back and allow the learners develop their own knowledge through debate, discussion and reflection with their peers. There are great examples of teachers who have managed this and seen incredible success in transforming the way the kids approach their lessons. We, as teachers, need to step aside and allow the students to make the decision on how to approach the application parts of learning.

4) Assess students' understanding of pre-class assignments to make the best use of class time.

Use quizzes that are completed at home (we use Edmodo at our school) to lead you in how to approach the content in the classroom. There is still space for a lecture now and again, especially for more complicated idea's, however don't expect the parents to have to develop the understanding of a topic. That is the teachers job.

5) Set a specific target for the flip.

Make sure the pedagogy is in place to enhance the learning experience, use the correct technology to support that pedagogy and finally, let the student decide which part of that technology suits them best.

Use critical thinking along with Blooms taxonomy to help plan a 'flipping' route for your own classroom.

6) Build assessments that complement the flipped model. 

The traditional assessments have their place but it is important to allow other, more cooperative ways of assessing the development of knowledge. Use sets of questions that can be answered in pairs or groups. Use   online quizzes and allow Google (research skills are vital). Use a debate. Make something up that suits you.

The most important thing is to use the technology available to enhance and drive your teaching. Do not use the technology for technologies sake but rather use it to transform the way you teach!

Good luck.

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!

Getting the parents on board?

This week we started teaching our parents how to use the iPad/Tablet.

The main point of our roll-out is that parents need to be partners in this project.

Firstly, they have all the usual parental decisions to make. How long can the child use the Tablet at home, what restrictions need to be used, can the child add or delete apps?

All these thing are up to the parents to discuss and negotiate with the child about. As teachers we cannot make these decisions for the parent, we give advice, train to use and help with software and hardware issues but we do not decide how the PERSONAL device is used.

Secondly, they should know how to use the devices themselves. The training this week focussed on setting up an iTunes account and setting restrictions on the iPad, later we will do the same on Android and Slate devices.

Finally, they need to allow the child to 'run' the device as their own. After discussing options we suggested each parent set's up one 'paying' iTunes/Play account that they run (and attach their payment details to!), in order to download paid apps and also one account for each child (set up in the parents name due to the 18 year age restriction, we can't allow lying now, can we?) to use for free apps that they will then update, control and, probably most importantly, access the iCloud with.

I learnt a lot too. Often parents are left behind or out of the technological revolution happening in education. They need to be involved and they need to be 'baby-stepped' through it. A teacher cannot assume that the parents can just up and run with the devices we are asking them to buy. As a school we need to be aware that parents often see technology from a different point of view. For them the important thing is the safety of their child, both literally in a security sense and on-line in the virtual sense. The first question we need to answer was regarding how safe our school cyber filter is. Luckily ours is pretty good!

We then need to let the parents understand that we all need to start some where, and that it's OK to ask question without feeling ignorant or embarrassed. Once this barrier is passed the training proceeds much more fluently.

The next step is to get our parents to have a device on their own and not just borrow the one they bought for the child....

...baby steps!

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 1 2013

This week we are asking teachers and students about appropriate use of Tablets in a classroom or school.

My thoughts on this topic range from 'free-range' to quite controlled. I do however want these devices to become ubiquitous, as if they were never not there. I love the potential they have to stimulate and entertain, to allow kids to create and own their knowledge and to allow them to share their creations.

What do you see as the most important aspect of Tablets in the classroom?

If you had to write one rule to give a Grade of Students what would it be?

For me I hope the strongest 'rule' I have to set is that the Students must remember that the Tablet is a tool and not the be all and end all of Education, it needs to be used in conjunction with books, pens, paper and all the 'traditional' education tools.

Please feel free to comment and share.