Official Launch of The Monthly Maker

It is with great pleasure and after lots of last minute scrambling that I'm able to announce the release the first issue of The Monthly Maker. Due to an issue with gmail, I've moved distribution over to Google Groups for some subscribers today. Everyone should have received an email so if you didn't please check your spam or junk folders. There may be some emails in the coming days to add the remainder of the emails to the group for distribution. Apologies while I sort out the technical details (though admittedly the timing was great as I was able to get help from an actual Googler!)

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Feedback is always welcome.

Enjoy!

Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone

This past week, I attended the Whangarei EdTech Team Summit. After a few years of presenting (and having recently brought my learners to present at the Auckland Summit) I felt it was time to put my hand up for some new things. So when I got an email from the event organizer asking for someone to do an Ignite talk, I put my hand up and replied straight away. It was something I was starting to become keen on over the last few months. I had actually committed to doing one at Global Education Day during ISTE this coming June, so I thought this would be a good intro and first go at it.

Then, at the Summit, there was a call for presenters to do a Demo Slam. I'd never done one of those, so I thought I'd give that a go to. I was extremely nervous about both talks, but I managed to get up in front of everyone (how much harder could it be than a regular session) and do my best.

The first one up was the demo slam. You're meant to have 3 minutes, but I feel like I only used 1 of them. My demonstration was about how you can link Google Slides from one file to the next if you copy the pages. An interesting time saver if you track a lot of progress from learners and don't want to open 20 or 30 files at a time. It didn't win, but the one that did (from a wonderful new member of my digital tribe - Lindsay Wesner) hit right to the heart of a pain point for educators - marking.

I was pretty nervous and probably went through my demo too fast. That's what happens when you're nervous, I guess.

I didn't have much time to fret about that as I had to finish up my Ignite talk and slides. I spent a good amount of time practicing my pacing, and cutting out the unnecessary words.

The next morning I was pretty nervous for the talk, but I felt ready. I sat through the first two ignites and very quickly, it was my turn. We're all our own worst critics, so I was pretty hard on myself, but I also went about it with some perspective. So I'll start with the positive:

I think my message was good, and for the most part cohesive and what I said followed a logical path. I think that I adapted well when things weren't working properly (the slides weren't advancing as easily as I thought they would, and I had some initial trouble with hooking up my chromebook, though I'll attribute that to nerves).

There were, however, a few areas where I could improve upon. For starters, I felt as if I had my head buried in my tablet (which had my script on it). Normally when I talk, I wing it. Every time. I know the main points I want to say, but often ramble and go in an illogical way. An ignite talk is meant to be short and precise. So I made sure I did that. The problem was that I wanted to make sure I said everything as planned. And due to nerves and a lack of confidence, I had a hard time taking my eyes of my script.

That being said, I had at least two attendees give me some really positive verbal feedback. AND while reading, I kept on seeing a lot of twitter notices come up, which meant I was getting a lot of positive feedback online.

Have a view of what I said. Feel free to give me any more advice that I may have missed. It was a scary thing to do, but I'm glad I did it and I'm looking forward to doing it again in another capacity, somewhere.

Book Review: Code in Every Class

When I went to Sydney last year for the Innovator Academy, we were all given books. I was lucky enough to be given a book that related exactly to my project: Code in Every Class by Kevin Brookhouser and Ria Megnin. I only recently got around to reading it, which is unfortunate for me, as it has proven quite useful when it comes to wrapping my head around certain things.

The book aims to be a help to all educators, regardless of their skill level when it comes to coding and computational thinking. A beginning will take away a lot from it, but so, too, will an educator experienced in teaching these concepts.

The bulk of the first few chapters deals with the rationale behind teaching coding in class and how teaching coding to everyone is something that we must pursue - even if those learners will never code another line in their lives. The arguments and ideas set forth are extremely helpful in persuading those who would put barriers in front of those of us who want to teach coding.

The authors explain how coding can and should be integrated across the curriculum (hey, doesn't that sound familiar - at least I know I'm on the right track) and it gives a lot of foundation information that will help any beginning get a foothold. And what they don't give (or don't have time and space to give) can be found in the many links shared throughout the book.

The last section of the book has a large number of activities that can be done, ranging from beginning lessons to quite complicated ones. Again, there are many links shared so that the reader can get more information.

I would definitely recommend this book to any and all educators, even if you already are using coding (or more accurately, computational thinking) in your practice. It will help you spread the word and more likely than not, give you many ideas to begin or transform the way you teach coding in your classroom or with your learners.

It can be found on Book Depository and Amazon.

Another Phase of the Journey

Earlier today I did something I have been meaning to do for ages: I applied to be a Google Trainer. I have been working towards this for at least the past year, though something else has always come up (for example, I applied for and was accepted to the Google Innovator Academy) but I have been chipping away at what I needed to do.

I figured that since I am presenting so often, and starting to create a lot of videos for my YouTube Channel, that Trainer was definitely the next logical step. My hope is that having that certification will 1) give me the key to another group of educators who can grow my own capabilities when it comes to all things Google and 2) open up some opportunities that may not have been available without it.

A few weeks ago, I made my trainer video. It's not as flashy as my Innovator Video, but I'm pretty pleased with it. Have a look at it if you'd like.

I should know in 4-6 weeks whether or not I've been accepted.

This is Something New: Learners at the Google Summit

This week I did something that I've wanted to do for a while now: bring learner presenters to an adult conference or summit. After my previous attempts to do something even grander failed, I wasn't going to take no for an answer in bringing children to the EdTechTeam Auckland Summit.

All ready at the @edtechteam summit with the @OrmPS learners. Not sure who is more nervous, them or me... #edtechteam pic.twitter.com/bn88oc3DAx

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) April 15, 2018

We had a busy term so our preparation was left to the last week of term. Maybe that was not ideal, but it was enough. The plan was to bring 16 of our learners and all four learning coaches from our Habitat. We had four presentations and they were all scheduled for the first day of the summit. We worked extremely hard over those five days at the end of the term. The learners actually were given a lot of leeway to come up with what they would say. I made the slides for the sessions and practiced with them, but for the most part they were on their own.

On the day, I was nervous and the children were nervous. We arrived fairly late due to one of our learners not showing up on time. I guess that was to be expected. We managed to get everyone lanyards and some nice free Google Cardboards courtesy of EdTech Team (who were extremely supportive of what we were trying to do for our learners).

For the most part the children weren't too interested in what the adults were saying (though some were) but they came prepared and even if they weren't listening, they all had a device to do something on while we adults were being inspired.

Overall, the children did an AMAZING job in the presentations. They were clearly nervous and some of them spoke extremely softly. Others forgot their lines or got mixed up, but the issues were minimal. Where they absolutely shone, though, was when they were helping out the adults at the sessions. Several of the children chose to stay back in the room with me and help out at the sessions that weren't theirs. They were so excited and happy that they knew more than adults and that they could show them how to do things they couldn't do. On the drive home, one of the girls told me that that was the first time that she had told an adult what to do.

The day was a complete success and the feedback from all four sessions was overwhelmingly positive. I'm excited to go back after the school holidays and see the effect it has on them.

An interesting side note to the whole day, was that they were clearly more up to date on some new features in YouTube than many in the audience - a fact that was continually brought up on the second day of the conference.

I'm so proud of all the learners who came with me to share. They were very brave and they took advantage of an opportunity that they were given. I definitely will look at increasing the frequency of events like this in the future.

Organizing an ILE (Part 2)

Since I've started working in an open plan environment (or whatever else you'd like to call it) one of the biggest challenges has been organizing the stationery. Some learners could see 3 or 4 adults in a given day and their books could potentially be in all different places. Last year we would have books thrown on the floor and the children would pick up theirs if they needed them. This was not a great system (nor was it one that we came up with - it was the children problem solving given the situation they were in.

Last year we trialled a lot of things. In our environment, though we had 90+ children, we had four smaller groups and often we organized things this way. Since we were a Year 3/4 split Habitat, I had my learners split their books and pencil cases up by Year and Gender. This system worked a lot better than the previously mentioned one, as children only had between 5 and 8 books to sort through to find theirs. There were still bottlenecks at certain times.

We tried giving each child a cubby hole. The problem was that were were (almost comically) short for one per child. So we tried to compromise and put two children per cubby. The messy outcome of that was that we were beginning to get a bit frustrated.

Then, in one meeting we had an idea. We ordered 100 of those magazine containers that so many of us use for reading books or what have you. We could fit two in each cubby and that would give enough space for all the children. Their mess would not stop their cubby buddy. So we tried that and it worked well enough. There were LESS bottlenecks (they weren't completely gone) and most problems were solved.

This year our school took notice of the success we had and we ordered one for every child. We have four houses (or Whanau) at Ormiston so we got four colours and matched them up as best as we could (orange and red are close, right?) and called them ketes. Wonderful. We put them in four corners of our Habitat (since our temporary space has NO cubbies) by Whanau, and we've asked the children to carry them with them. We've been very clear about what goes into them (just their school stuff - it's not a locker or a desk).

It has been amazing and we've had very few issues with lost books (and even then, it's usually the adults who have them) or bottlenecks. And if the children bring them, they have everything they could possibly need, so there is no need to run the 100m across the space to get their eraser or lucky pen. It's definitely an idea worth looking into if you've had similar problems.

Coding Across the Curriculum: Update 2

It's been a while since I've been able to update any progress on my Innovator Project, due to several events beyond my control, but over the last few weeks, I've been able to renew my focus on these parts of my life and make some fairly significant progress.

I think the timing of this can be quite helpful, because I know several NZ schools have not really been able to implement the new Digital Technologies Curriculum. The goal of this project is help educators implement computational thinking into their program, so there's no judgement here, just resources and assistance.

New Videos
I've managed to finish my third video for Coding Across the Curriculum and then start and complete the fourth. I've included the two here for anyone and everyone to try out themselves or with their learners. The first is focussed on making stories with Scratch and the second will help you learn how to make calculations - both simple and complex - using Scratch.

The actual process of making the videos is becoming easier with each time - though I'm still pretty nervous when filming and often trip over words - sorry about that.

Using the Videos

I've been able to do some real world testing with several of the videos I've made. With my Habitat of 89 learners, we've worked in pairs to make a quiz each. The children had a lot of fun doing this and were, for the most part, able to follow along with that video on their own. Several of the children added their own extras to the work they were doing, which was a nice added bonus. We were able to have some good conversations about coding - which was really the whole goal of the process. I even saw some children use a quiz in Scratch for their iExplore (basically Genius Hour) project. It was nice to see that in action. I did find that the Choose Your Own Adventure video was a bit harder for the children (aged 7-9) to understand, but many of them did get it.

So my recommendation to anyone out there: just give the videos to your students. Let them have a go. If you don't know how to code, do it alongside them. Start the conversation. It's not about being expert coders, but it is about being creative and solving real-world problems and learning how to think logically.

Or, as an educator, you could watch the videos and learn how to do the coding projects on your own and then teach them the way you want. They are meant to help you and help your learners develop this skill and way of thinking.

Where to Next

I'm not sure how many people will make it this far into the post, but I do have a few exciting things in the pipeline.

First off, there are more concrete plans for future videos. The next video will show how to make an interactive display (much like you would find in a museum) and future videos will deal with art, music, VR, spreadsheets and more. Now that I've found a rhythm in making these, the plan will be to have a new one every few weeks. At least that's the plan.

There are two more next steps that I am in various stages of implementing and a third one that will possibly be a bit further off.

The first new thing that I'd like to announce officially here (and announcements on Twitter and Facebook will follow in the coming days) is that there will be a MakerEdNZ newsletter. The current plan is to have a monthly, one page newsletter that will have links to various resources or videos. There will be a coding tie-in, which will highlight a specific coding block or command (and linked into a video which uses the same block or command), a link to a Digital Breakout and some links to ideas that can be used in the classroom. If you are interested in subscribing to this newsletter, please fill out the subscription form below. I expect the first issue to be ready to be emailed out in mid-April.

The second thing I'm starting to explore will be a coding contest. I'm likely to make this NZ-wide. I've still got to work out MANY details of this, but it is definitely in the pipeline and I would like to do this before the end of 2018. 

The third thing I'm looking at doing is to start some free meet-ups for educators who are interested in discussing or learning about coding. I want to focus on the other things at the moment, but am definitely open to anyone who is willing to help me run these. But this may be something that comes about in 2019. We shall see.

So that's where things stand at the moment. I'm pretty excited about all the ideas I've been getting the last little while and the fact that now I've got a resource of four videos (over an hour of content).

Have a look at the videos, and if you have feedback it will be greatly appreciated. If you like the videos, subscribe to the channel and use them with your learners. The support will help and it lets me know that they are being used.

Look forward to some new updates in the coming months and in the meantime SUBSCRIBE to the upcoming newsletter.