Google Updates

There have been a flurry of updates around Google lately - from the announcement of a holding company Alphabet https://abc.xyz/ to new logos and beyond:

I am very excited about the new addition to Google Docs, a tool called Voice Typing. You find it under Tools - Voice typing

This will pop up a little box with a microphone icon in it, to activate the dictation function, you will have to click on the icon:

There are a number of punctuation commands: "Period", comma", "exclamation point", "question mark", "new line" and "new paragraph" according to Google Docs editor help. I have also found that it started responding to "full stop" after several attempts.
You might see a grey line appear under some of your dictated text. Right-click on this and you will get some suggestions:

The 'so what': Why do I care, and why should you?

I have blogged before about the value of digital storytelling, by looking at incorporating different ways of telling our stories rather than just in text. I believe that this nifty little tool will allow students to tell their stories orally and turn it into text for them without having to go through the often painfully slow typing process.  I could see this especially helpful for students with special learning needs, if offered as one of multiple means of expression and action. Students still have to edit their text to ensure that it represents what they want to say, so they have to engage with the text further.

Combine this with a Chrome Extension like Read & Write for Google, even just on the free version, for students to have the option to hear this text spoken back to them and I think we are really onto a winner here. Not only are we allowing students to get their text to paper without having to physically type it, we are also lightening the cognitive load on them a little, allowing them to spend more time on getting their story just right. Taking away barriers allows us to focus on what is really important - the learning.

Technology makes me wonder....

Every now and then I realise how fortunate I am to be living now and working in the role I am in. How has society developed over the last 100 years to the point where you can catch a plane (or two) to travel from Queensland to South Australia, can call or video call your family and friends from most place on this earth, where you can access your 'stuff' anywhere anytime on any device? The power of connecting and collaborating though is in my humble opinion the biggest game changer for our life today and in the future.

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Humans are (in the majority) social creatures, and as far as I know, telling stories are a vital part of the culture of all peoples on earth. I sometimes I wish we could have a time lapse of the different ways we have been telling stories over time; I expect that oral story telling would get by far the most airtime! However, the reliance on a person orally telling a story to others is limiting the potential audience. Add the written word, first by hand, later in printed form, and your story can reach a potentially much larger audience - though the absence of a narrator would potentially change the message (which in itself is not necessarily a bad or a good thing, it's simply different). Going to the extreme of making the written form the only acceptable form of story telling though is limiting both the authorship and the audience.

Now we have so many more ways of telling a story and connecting with an audience: Digital voice recording tools help us to record an oral story and share it; video incorporates visual and aural aspects and can also be shared; via online collaborative tools not only can be we connect an authentic audience with the written, oral or visual story we want to tell, we can also collaborate on and become co-authors.

There are a number of apps out there that combine several of above features into one finished product. +Allanah King was the first person to introduce me to Book Creator and I have been a huge fan ever since (in fact she became one of the first book Creator Ambassadors just recently and has inspired me to attempt this, too). Book Creator is to my knowledge the only widely used app yet that works across iOS, Android and Win8.1 (I will try it on Win10 soon) and allows anyone to be the author of an eBook. Combine text, photos, drawing, audio and video into one and share your finished ePub creation yet still leave us with the book experience so that we don't loose this part of our story telling history.  

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However, technology is not without challenge; I often feel like Frank Zappa who is quoted on the left. With all these stories out there that we can connect to anywhere anytime, do I have anything to add? While I have been talking about digital storytelling and the Book Creator app to a lot of the schools I work with, I have never felt the need to blog about it - after all lots of other bloggers have already done that. Are we going to see less original stories written because of the fact that digital technology lets us connect with all these already created stories? How are we going to ensure that 'good stories' will continue to be written by people without 'wigs and stuff'?

Technology certainly makes me wonder...

TeachMeetNZ Session 2/2015 18 July 2015

Today I had the pleasure to once again be supporting the fabulous +Sonya Van Schaijik and her group of dedicated educators with #TeachMeetNZ as their Twitter Broadcaster. You can view the full recording here on YouTube, and Sonya will be cutting it into individual presentations which will be available from the TeachMeetNZ Wiki in the coming days.

I collated the tweets around this session into a Storify, please enjoy:

Flick app

I'm impressed by how apps and programmes are starting to play nicely across different platforms, Flick is one of these examples. I was introduced to this app by teachers at one of my New Zealand schools in 2014, originally it allowed you to move images from one Apple device to another, e.g. from your MacBook to your iPad and vice versa - rather than plugging the iPad into the MacBook and moving files that way. Last week I found out that Flick can do much more now:

From http://getflick.io/Flick_Windows.pdf 

In a multi-platform BYOD environment this could be a simple and free tool to share images and now documents between the different devices.

What is the use of this in the classroom? If I was in an environment without a reliable cloud platform such as GAFE or O365, this would be a simple way to share an image and / or document between any number of different devices connected to the same wifi.

Note: There is now an auto-destruct feature which reminds me a lot of snapchat (and the controversy around it). As with all digital technologies, we need to ensure we keep (digital) citizenship rights and responsibilities in mind at all times.

Controlling the on-sharing of your Google Docs

It was signalled at the GAFE Summit in Sydney in April, but today is the first time that I have seen how you can control the on-sharing of your Google docs.

Click on Share at the top right of your screen, and this window opens:

Select Advanced, and you get this new window:

Just above the blue 'Done' you can Change who has permission to add people:

Why does this matter? Some information in the education context is private to a certain degree and should not be shared on beyond the initial group. This change will make it much easier for schools to fulfil their obligations without someone accidentally sharing confidential information in the wrong circle.

Professional Inquiry 2015 - reflection term 2

I just realised that my first post around my inquiry was just after the last GEG Gold Coast Meet up, and tonight is Meetup #3 :) The fabulous +Danni Foster-Brown has invited me to present on Read & Write for Google, expanding on what +Greg O'Connor presented on last time. High time for a reflection post on the progress with my Professional Inquiry!

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Collaboration is the 21CLD skill I have decided to focus on first. In the sessions I have run since the last post I have made a deliberate effort to incorporate some form of collaboration, sometimes just informal collaboration (for example a collaborative web tool for brain storming) or shared responsibility (e.g. explain your thinking to a partner, they clarify and present this back to the group). In some instances I have been able to push this just a step further and had them make substantive decisions together. Given the nature of the PL sessions I have been running, this is as far as I can go I believe. Interestingly enough, the presentation for tonight includes no collaboration so far at all; I think a presentation could well include collaborative aspects, so I will re-work it before I run it.

The next skill I want to look at is Knowledge Construction. My gut feeling would be that most teachers would be involved in Knowledge Creation for planning and preparing their work; however, anecdotally I have heard of teachers who have all their planning and preparation provided to them and just need to 'deliver' the lessons. I would count the teachers I have worked with over the last few months as Knowledge Creators.

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Almost all my sessions are planned with the WHY - HOW - WHAT in mind - giving a foundation for meaningful knowledge construction. We always try to work within the school context; however, when you are working with diverse groups you have not met before, a broad approach will be useful. Rich, open-ended questions are really important to allow learners (in this case teachers) to create knowledge. The next step requires learners to be inquirers into significant ideas - in New Zealand the practise known as Teaching as Inquiry (also called Teacher / Teaching Inquiry, Action Research or Action Learning) helps teachers to enhance their practise by focusing on a particular need. Over the last few years I had opportunity to support teachers with this, and I am looking forward to doing so again in the future. Until such time that I can work with teachers on a more long-term basis I will 'park' this skill here as I want to actively explore what it looks like when we take it to the next level of making connections and identifying patterns.

This give me a chance to reflect on skill #3 which is Self-Regulation, with the first step requiring substantive time and opportunity. I have not spent enough time in Australia yet to refer to my current work, so I will reflect on past experiences. Most of the teachers I have supported with the Teaching Inquiries have certainly had extended periods of time to work on their inquiries.

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I am not sure that I have always made the LI and SC completely clear in that context, though, the inquiry question is not necessarily the LI. The aim of a Teaching Inquiries is in almost all cases to enhance student learning by improving teacher practise, so I will try to make sure I make this completely clear in the future. Teachers who are inquiring into their practise plan their work and receive feedback to use to improve their learning.
At this point I would like to give mention to the various online fora teachers are participating in, namely the VLN in NZ and various Educator Groups on Facebook and Google Plus. While some people are rightly concerned about the echo chamber effect, I have seen a lot of roust discussion in these groups which are helping teachers to receive outside information and feedback they can utilise to improve their practise.


So my goal for the next few months is to consolidate and expand the efforts I have made in regards to these three skills, before I tackle the next 21C skills :) I would love some ideas or feedback on what you think works for your professional learning- feel free to leave comment below. THANKS!

EdCamp QLD

EdCamps or EduCamps are also known as TeachMeet UnConferences. They usually follow the Unconference idea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference). If you are interested you can find out more about EducampNZ at bit.ly/EduCampNZ.

This clip give a good summary about how most EdCamps are run.

Would you like to have an EdCamp somewhere in Queensland during 2015? A group of keen educators are are hoping to make this happen. Please complete below survey to help us with planning and running one (or more) event(s)!