Can you hear the Tui sing?
German born Kiwi; wife, mother, Lead Learner, certified Google for Education Trainer, Microsoft Innovative Educator.
All views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Not only do I love helping out my friends +Annemarie Hyde and +Marnel van der Spuy, this was also an excellent opportunity to a) push myself a bit further and b) to progress with my inquiry of how to build capacity for blended learning for rural and isolated teachers - funnily enough in this case I presented from a rural location to a room full of teachers in Rotorua about Building your online PLN.
+Sonya Van Schaijik, +Justine Hughes and I had a quick practise during the week with Sonya as usual very competently managing all technical aspects :) Looking back over the four online presentations I have given over the last 6 months, this time I felt the most confident yet. There is a bit to get used to when presenting online through a GHO (Google Hangout - or when it gets recorded, a Google Hangout on Air):
You need to have your presentation ready to go, with consideration to bandwidth (amount and size of images, use of Powerpoint / Keynote vs. Google Presentation).
Your technical setup needs to work (I tend to plug the ethernet cable into my laptop now - so that excludes presenting from my Chromebook or my MacBook Air) incl. microphone and headphones, you need to have the Google Hangout Plug-in installed
Within Google Hangout you should explore the various settings and tools, e.g. Toolbox which allows you to show your name and an image at the bottom of your screen etc.
What are you going to say? With TeachMeetNZ and Eduignite you have rules about length of presentation and are supposed to auto-advance slides every 15s, there isn't much your audience can see / read in 15s and not much you can say (especially when you have an accent like me:D). I must admit after talking with the lovely +Diana Wilkes I decided to print off my speaker notes - there you go, paper is still important!
The one slightly disconcerting thing when presenting is that you only see your own screenshare (your presentation) and don't see or hear anyone else (all other cameras and mics get turned off to preserve bandwidth). It is challenging to present without having any form of verbal or non-verbal feedback!
I love the learning that comes from these sessions. It was great to hear from Sonya about the origins of TeachMeetNZ - which will turn 1 in May! If you haven't done so, please go and visit the TeachMeetNZ site and listen to the recordings from previous presentations. You can also contact Sonya (@vanschijik) if you would like to use this platform to run your own event. Justine very passionately spoke about how she does not give homework anymore but instead has her students 'prep for learning'. I definitely want to find out more about this, and I will go back to her presentation and follow the links from there (I have never been in favour of giving homework as a teacher, back in my days as music teacher I used to say to the students practising your instrument / voice is enough homework). I wish I could have stayed online to listen to the presentations in the room, however, I was able to read the twitter stream and joined in some of the learning that way.
Where does this fit in with my inquiry: The presentations have all been recorded and are available individually (thanks Sonya!) on the TeachMeetNZ site. Anyone can go and rewind them as many times as they like. You will also find the respective presentation embedded into the individual pages. Teachers can now go and listen to these in their own time. Where my inquiry comes in is to help teachers find such recordings when they need them - otherwise we are simply preaching to the converted, aren't we? A typical 'Kiwi thing' stands in my way, I don't really like to blow my own trumpet; while I don't mind presenting f2f to groups of people I know or groups of strangers, I find it much harder to tell people "go and listen to my recording" - it's much easier to say for example "go and listen to Justine's recording, and by the way, my recording is on that site, too". That will be my next little hurdle to get over I suppose...
I have a huge passion for learning and teaching in rural Northland - this is the only place I have ever taught, so I claim no expertise for learning and teaching in urban areas. One of the beauties and the challenges of working in rural schools is the distance from cities, but with this comes a lack of access to some of the provisions that schools in urban centres enjoy.
Working in a PLD programme that is running from year to year, one of my major foci is how to both achieve sustainability of the programme within a school and build capacity for teachers to access learning beyond what they might already access, not just f2f but also in blended ways. In my initial scoping work some of the teachers remarked that their rural location diminished access to PLD. As we are talking about relatively small schools, even within a schools teachers can be isolated, there might just be one Music / PE / foreign language teacher etc. within a school, and they can find it hard to find people with a similar interest to bounce ideas off etc. within their immediate surroundings.
My inquiry this year will look at how I can support the schools I work with to connect with PLD in blended ways. Questions I am looking at are: Why do we undertake PD? What are different forms of PD, why use blended learning? How do I pick the right PD for myself as teacher, and what do I need to make it happen? What do I as facilitator need to do in my practise to build capacity in my schools for accessing blended learning for teachers when this is the right tool? With the introduction of N4L schools will be in a better position in relation to infrastructure to access blended learning, which should make things a little easier in that regard.
At the Digital Horizons Conference in Whangarei last Friday I held a workshop about Building you Online PLN which I think is one of the ways of how I can build this capacity. What else could I be doing? What else would you find helpful?
What a week in education in New Zealand! The Festival of Education was the most visible event this week, but there were also lots of smaller happenings around the country such as FarNet's Digital Horizon Conference in Whangarei, Connected Rotorua Meeting 'Let's Talk Google', Educamp Dunners. Somehow I ended up playing a part in a few of these this week...
My personal and professional highlight was presenting at TechMeetNZ on Saturday morning as part of the Festival of Education. Under the expert guidance of the ever-patient +Sonya Van Schaijik with superb support from +Marnel van der Spuy and +Kathy Scott a group of 7 NZ educators presented on a topic of their choice for 3min each, live streamed on air - with actual face-to-face audience in the room with Sonya at the Festival of Education. Sonya had asked me earlier this year to take part and I was happy to, only realising fairly late into it how much additional attention might be attracted by it being part of the Festival! It was nerve wrecking and fabulous at the same time!
As part of my role I am used to presenting to groups of people on various topics, and I have used my TeachMeetNZ topic "Supporting Universal Design for Learning with Google Apps for Education" before as a trial run for Saturday. Where this differed though was that when presenting in a live Google Hangout, there is no verbal or non-verbal feedback from the audience. On top of that, the clock is ticking, and it can be a challenge to say everything within the 3min and still make sense!
I was first up, and everything went well. My co-presenters +Diana Wilkes, +Justine Driver, +Myles Webb, +Juliet Revell, +Manu Faaea-Semeatu, +Emma Alaalatoa-Dale were so knowledgeable, it was fantastic to hear their presentations, I want to go away and study each of their presentations again as there is much to learn from all of them! You can find them here, just click on their names.
So what do I take away from this? There are lots of great things happening in NZ education at the moment. Individual educators are happy to share with each other and the world in a rewindable way (the recording is available here and be available on the TeachMeetNZ wikipage). +Juliet Revell made some great points in her reflection, and the main thing I read in there was every day we ask our students to put themselves out there, push themselves beyond their expectations. Do we do the same for ourselves? Do we practise what we preach? I can honestly say, this weekend I did.
Would I do it again? Definitely, not just in the TeachMeetNZ format, but I am also thinking about flipping my teaching in other ways. To go with my UDL theme, I am thinking about revamping some of my resources and tutorials and maybe presenting them as voice or video recording - what do you think?
One other thing I learnt over this last week is to get over some of my self-doubt; I am in awe of these amazing educators I have been presenting with at TeachMeetNZ, of the people I am in touch with on twitter, on Google+ etc. but I sometimes doubt that I am meant to be there, that I have got something to say that is worthwhile for others to hear. The support, feedback and love from everyone I have worked with this week, at the LwDT hui in Auckland, at Digital Horizons in Whangarei, at Connected Rotorua, at TeachMeetNZ and everywhere else, means so much to me so that I am saying to myself - like I have often said to my students - you have something worthwhile to share. Now it's your turn: How and where will you share?
Recently I went to a school with a colleague who gave me feedback after my session there. It was really good to get some constructive criticism, though admittedly it has been a challenging conversation with me at the receiving end.
As part of the session I used this whakatauki:
He pai te tirohanga ki nga mahara mo nga rā pahemo engari ka puta te māramatanga i runga i te titiro whakamua.
It's good to have recollections of the past; however, wisdom comes from being able to prepare opportunities for the future.
When I prepared for the session, the meaning made total sense to me and I felt it fitted at this place in the presentation. However, I am notoriously shy about speaking Maori though my pronounciation is not too bad, and at this occassion, with a Maori colleague in the room, I felt even shier than usual and only referred to the English translation. In this way, it almost became tokenism on my part: Why use a whakatauki when I am not prepared to say it in Maori?
My colleague asked me some very good questions: Where does the whakatauki come from? (I found it on the internet). Who is it by? (I don't know) Has it meaning for the school where I used it? (I don't know).
This really made me think; I understood the whakatauki as "we need to know where we come from, who came before us, what made us who we are right here and now, but unless we prepare opportunities for the future, such as personalising learnging etc., we will not gain true wisdom" - is this what the author meant it to mean? If not, is there a problem with me interpreting it in this way?
As my colleague pointed out, a native speaker of te reo could have challenged me in in the use of the whakatauki at this place, in the translation of the whakatauki and the point I was trying to make could have been completely lost.
In fact, what point was I trying to make? Did I need to use a whakatauki to do so and why? I have actually taken the slide out of the presentation I had shared with the school now, I no longer feel confortable leaving it there.
Where to from here?
I could just avoid any whakatauki completely as I do not have a deep enough understanding to use them meaningfully - but this could look very culturally un-responsive because not everyone would know why I was not using them, people might think I am only thinking about the culture I most closely align with.
I could make a real effort to gain an understanding of a handful of whakatauki that are relevant to my work and use them at (hopefully!) the right occassions.
I could check with the schools I work with about the whakatauki that are part of their school culture, ask them / their students to teach me about them.
I think I should persue both latter points - what do you do?
My colleague raised a couple of other points, praising without knowing if praise is due (I had been told this years ago by my subject advisor! - is this an ESOL issue or just the way I work with people I wonder?), and assumption of people's technical understanding (after my ULearn experience I tend to under, rather over-assume - I'll have to watch this).
So what did it feel like to be at the other end of a 'challenging conversation'?
Not that great lol - I would much rather be told I am perfect! Seriously though, I really appreciated the constructive criticism, and it really made me think. If I keep on harping on about cultural responsiveness, how can I express this in my work that it doesn't become tokenism?
What made this conversation less challenging?
We have known each other for several years, she straight away got to the point and then left it at that and we talked about other things (except when I brought it up again). She asked questions, then made her point as an observation of a fact, talked about the possible consequences and in no way I felt I was being personally critised, it was my practise we looked at - and she was right :)
What can I learn from this when I need to initiate a challenging conversation?
Having a relationship helps. Critique the fact, the behaviour, not the person. Ask questions. State the facts, point out consequences. Offer solutions if asked. I need to go back to my notes from Joan Dalton's workshop, there were more things she said, but this is my little summary of this experience.
(As always, this is my opinion and may not reflect the opinion of my employers. I am rambling on a bit here, but this is an accumulation of various thoughts that have been going on in my poor little head for the last little while :D)
I'm just listening to a TEDx Talk,When I grow up I want to be happy: One student's experience of hacking his education:
This brought me back to a thought that has been going around in my head for quite some time: If I had 'the power', what would the successful schools of the future look like?
I have to backtrace here a little, as for most of us, my opinions and thoughts are shaped by my background and experiences.
I grew up in Germany, in a semi-rural region in the state of Bavaria, which has in my opinion a very old fashioned school system: After 4 years at primary school, students are separated into three different streams of schools, based on their mid year grades in maths, German and social studies. The lowest stream, Hauptschule, will lead to an apprenticeship after completion of y9 (I believe there have been some changes since, I have not kept up to date really). The reality is that many German parents do not want their children to go down this path, it often is the school for children of immigrants. Then there is Realschule, which leads to white collar jobs; it has a slightly better 'reputation' as after completion of y10 a student has the opportunity to enter another school and complete y11&12. This was the type of school I had trained for. And then there is Gymnasium, the school that most parents want their children to go to, the only stream that leads to full university entrance and therefore the school that all future teachers come out of (and then during teacher training they have to learn about the type of school they will teach in). Anyway, much could be said about this, but that would be sidetracking.
After 4 years at university I cam to New Zealand and completed my Graduate Diploma in Teaching (Secondary) in Whangarei. Straight out of the course I started teaching in the Bay of Islands as music teacher and HoD Music. From there I went to another high school as HoD Music. Then life started to become a bit more 'interesting' and I worked in parent education in the Far North, in the homes of parents of 0 - 3y olds. Back to high school as music teacher briefly, a stint a Playcentre as supervisor, and then I spent just under 5 years as Liaison Teacher for The Correspondence School, visiting students in their homes or their places of study. I returned into the classroom for 15 months at an intermediate school, some time at MoE Special Education, and now I have been in the e-learning facilitator role for 13 months. It's not quite your ordinary run-of-the-mill teaching career (which does make it quite hard to fit into the 'mould' some times - let me know if you know of a mould that fits me once my contract finishes at the end of the year, will you?).
Having had these diverse experiences and lots and lots of contact with parents and times in homes, I believe that while the education system in general is working for some of our students, it isn't for some of the others, and even for the ones it does work for, we could make improvements. Just a disclaimer here: I have never worked in cities, always in the rural areas of the Far North, hence my opinion is solely based on this.
What is we truly thought of a village raising the children? And how big is our village?
An American psychologist I used to work with said to me once "there is no wonder we have such high teen suicide rates in NZ, you can't go anywhere where you don't meet anyone you know" - there truly is only 2 degrees of separation in New Zealand! I can attest to this, I have only been in New Zealand for coming up 17 years, and I can barely walk into any school in the north without meeting someone I know. So let's look at the size of 'my village':
I don't even live in a village, I'm a few km down the valley. Depending who I talk to, I will describe where I live differently - name of the township, name of the valley, I might say north of Kaikohe, inland from Kerikeri or an hour north of the last traffic lights in Whangarei (that is the truth!) - so all of that is part of 'my village' to a certain degree. My children attended a lovely little primary school about 17km from our home (due to our prior connections) where the majority of students busses in. So that town and the places their friends come from are part of 'my village', too. I shop in Kaikohe and in Kerikeri, so they are part of 'my village'. I work in schools 80km north west, 80 & 85km north east, 100km south west and 60km south east - so that makes the rest of Northland my extended village also.
So if I see for example Kaikohe and Kerikeri as part of my village, what can I do for the children there? I have to say the schools in our area are working extremely hard, and many are having great results. Using my magic wand, I would love to see that everyone in education joined my view in all of us looking after all children - many people probably do already. After all, they will all be our future community members, there is no "I won't buy from the supermarket you are working at because you went to the other school!". I am not sure if our system is set up for it, but I would love to eliminate any 'ours' and 'theirs' thinking, in a way of schools feeling another school is taking 'their' students away from them - I think this might apply more to secondary than primary schools, often in the news they are talking about the 'zones' of the city schools and how living in the zone for one school can be a lot more expensive than living in a different school's zone. If all school worked together, would there be a way to get out of this??
I wish all schools could sit down and work out together what their particular strength is that they can offer students, e.g. there might be a TKKM, a Christian School, a school offering vocational pathways, a school focussing on arts / drama / music, a school with focus on academia etc. If we could ensure that there was easy transition between schools, students wouldn't have to get locked into the one or the other at an early age (like in Germany) because just like Logan says in his TEDx talk, they don't know yet what they want to be - except happy!
A school wouldn't have to be jack-of-all-trades (in our rural areas, it can be so hard to get specialist teachers: Often enough if a foreign language is offered for example, it finishes when that teacher leaves). However, what if there is just one school in an area??? I like the idea of effectively linking in with distance / online learning (though at this point in time I don't think it's as good yet as working together with at least some f2f interaction), because bussing all around a district is a waste of time in my opinion (I spend way too much time in the car every week...). Also, your local teachers, knowing you and your community, could be able to support you in your village much better than someone who doesn't know your village.
Many schools are already looking at linking in to local knowledge and expertise and I think this is great, another example where the community is raising the children by sharing their knoweldege (and also learnign from and with the children).
Is this a silly idea? I would love to hear what you think about this!
Another of my thoughts is about truly valuing learning outside 9-3 and the school grounds. I am the first to admit how annoyed I used to get when my students were away for a day and missed out on the vital work in my class (honestly, in my early secondary teaching days I didn't really care what else they missed out on, never mind what they gained from being away! How sad is that!). I have taken my children to Germany for 5 weeks last year and they learnt more and different things than they would have learnt at school (and my oldest still came away with awesome grades in his Y9 Cambridge Checkpoint exams). There are various reasons why students are away - looking after little brothers and sisters does not rank very highly in my opinion, but there might be some really good points in that. Visiting dad in prison is another sadly common reason for being absent at one of the schools I used to work at - who am I to say that visiting dad is less important than my school work?? Going to a relative's tangi is important, more important than analysing a classical music score!
So if I acknowledge that experiences outside school during class time are important, how can I help my students to
a) not fall behind in school work
b) support / incorporate their learning from outside school?
With modern technologies, a) can be solved more easily than previously: I can create a site and post work / tasks on there, accessible anywhere, anytime. My students could create shared notes in a Google Doc about the content of a class, also shared with the student who was away. I could set up flipped lessons that get discussed in class and / or online, we could video and post what is going on in class. Students could use blogs to reflect on what they have learnt.
For b) I need to go back to what I have been thinking and blogging about a lot last year: Relationships. We need to have a relationship with our students to realise what is going on, why they are away. We need to foster an atmosphere where they dare tell someone / you that they have been away to visit dad in prison. Where they feel they are not being judged or blamed. What about giving students a voice in their learning and ask them about how what they are experiencing outside school is fitting in with school? Is school offering relevance to their life?
Digital Technologies again can be a help: When we went to Germany, my boys wrote a blog (admittedly, it was a bit of a chore for me trying to get them to do it - except for the post about Legoland lol). Photographs, videos, written and spoken reflections. This will not be appropriate for all occasions, but for example in the case of an oversea's holiday, they pictures a student chooses to post can give the teacher an insight about what is important for them and can provided topic for discussion, reflections etc.
So what would my successful schools of the future look like (if I had 'the power'): They would
Look at all students in a village as their students and teach to their strengths so all students get a great education Use an online platform for collaboration and creativity, create flipped and rewindable learning, synchronous and assynchronousMake strong connections with individuals and their experiences and skills both inside and out of schoolProvide relevant, targeted learning opportunities
Where did I put that magic wand??? What would your successful schools of the future look like??
Apple TV (ATV for short) is a little gadget made by apple which you connect to a (tv) screen. It has built in wifi-connectivity as well as a small number of apps such as iTunes, Flickr, YouTube etc - almost a mini computer. In schools it is most often used for its ability to mirror (almost) any apple device to the screen wirelessly. At approx. NZ$150 (plus cost of a HDMI cable) it is not the cheapest way to show what's on an iPad on a bigger screen, but it is quite versatile.
Alternatively, you can purchase an app (programme) for your computer, e.g. Reflector App. This programme costs US$12.99 and installs on your computer (Windows or Mac). When you run the programme, your iPad can mirror to the computer (which might be connected to a big screen). One big advantage of this over the ATV is that you can show multiple devices at one time. However, you have one computer tied up with running this.
Why use it?
To show students what to do to get to an app on the iPad / how to use an app on the iPad
To use your iPad with the class and everyone can see what is on the screen (e.g. Popplet app, or a website)
For ATV: To use one of the built-in apps like YouTube and show on the big screen without needing a dedicated computer connected to the screen.
To have students share their work on the iPad on the big screen. (Note: The person holding the iPad is in control of the mirroring).
Both solutions depend on reliable wifi, the iPads need to be connected to the same wifi as the ATV or the computer running the reflector app.
How do I mirror my iPad?
On iOS7, swipe up from the bottom of your iPad screen. If your apple tv or your reflector app are running, you will see it in the middle. Tap it, then select the device you want to mirror to and enable mirroring.
A little tip: It pays to set up your apple tv with a distinct name (I called mine 'Monika's apple tv', but you might want to call it 'apple tv room 3' or similar) as in a school setting your apple tv range might overlap - and you don't want to have your puberty education video accidentally appear on the screen in the new entrants' room!
Troubleshooting:
You can't see your device appear when you swipe up on the iPad?
Ensure ATV or reflector app are turned on. (Note: When using the reflector app, the name of your computer will appear in the iPad menu).
Have you selected the device and mirroring on the iPad?
Are your iPad and the ATV / computer running the reflector app on the same wifi?
You are mirroring the image but can't hear the sound?
Ensure volume is turned up on the iPad and the ATV / laptop. Note: You might want to check if little hands have tutued with the headphone socket on the iPad.
Does your screen have a 'sound out'? E.g. some of the IWBs have a separate sound control behind or to the side of the board, but your ATV is sending video and sound to the projector only (via the HDMI cable). One work around we have trialled is connecting the 'sound out' on the projector with a 'sound in' on the soundbox - you have to remember to change your sound source. Alternatively you could purchase a little USB charged speaker set nd attach it to 'sound out' on the projector.
Your ATV is stuck on 'setting date and time'? (As a result of this only the icons Computers and Settings will show, no connection to iTunes possible. Mirroring will still work.)
Connect your ATV to a different network, e.g. your cellphone wifi hotspot. This should resolve the issue, set date and time automatically and restore all your missing app icons (YouTube, Flickr etc.). When you reconnect to your regular network, ATV should work fine.
Your mirroring and / or streaming of videos is lagging and / or drops off?
You need robust wireless for mirroring to be effective.
You can help this by connecting the ATV / computer with reflector app to the network with an ethernet cable therefore reducing pressure on the wifi. Check with your techie if they both run on the same network, e.g. if you have a student byod and a different staff network.
I hope you find this useful! Please feel free to add to this in the comments box, or email me and I will add it to the post!
This post was prompted by Hazel Owen's post here. New technologies should make it much easier for all our students to access their learning effectively. Universal Design for Learning is one of the key terms I am trying to understand and apply: How can we design learning environments and learning aexperiences to meet the needs of all our learners? I have shared a presentation on Google Forms for UDL with colleagues before, but we can also adjust Google Docs to meet needs of some of our learners better.
If your students are writing text in Google Docs, you can leave written comments in Google Docs. Using an app like Kaizena, you can also leave voice comments. Why use it? Do you students find it hard / boring to read your comments? Would you like to give your comments some personal touches? Try this:
Installing Kaizena:
Go to My Drive, click on Create.
Select connect more apps at the bottom.
In the new window, type voice into the search bar. Choose Kaizena, then click on connect.
Using Kaizena:
Select the Google Doc you would like to leave a voice comment for.
Right click it (Command click on a Mac?). Select Open with, Kaizena.
The GDoc now opens within Kaizena (it has a dark side bar on the left and the fonts look a little different, but the GDoc remains the same in Google Drive)
Select who to send the comment to (within the side bar)
Highlight any area within the document and you get a little Menu with options:
You can leave a voice comment, a written comment or attach some links / resources.
By clicking on the green button above the highlighted area, you can review your feedback or add some more. While you are recording, you can scroll through the document though it pays to tell the recipient that you are scrolling while recording because the voice comment itself is linked to the area you had highlighted.
When you are finished, select the button "Send Feedback to" in the left side bar. You get the choice of adding it to the GDoc as comment or emailing it.
The feedback will be visible under comments back in the Doc in Google Drive:
If you would like to hear my ramblings on above doc, you can find it here. Please feel free to share some ways of how you use Kaizena or another voice comment app :)
