Anyone who knows me (or who has been in my home) knows I have a little bit of an obsession with Lego. So when the opportunity came up to learn about some Lego resources that can be used in the classroom, one could easily imagine that I would literally jump at the opportunity. This morning I made the drive down to Te Matauranga School and was immediately transported back to my childhood dreams when I saw the sheer volume of Lego that was present at the school. It was amazing!
And it only got better from there. We spent most of the day working on some hands on activities, all to do with Lego WeDO 2.0 as well as with EV3 robots. Our amazing facilitators (who came across the ditch from Australia) made sure we had a lot of things to do.
The first thing we played with, was the WeDo 2.0. I had seen this in previous years (I'm sure if you go back in my twitter feed, you'll see it) and in the interim had never really gotten a chance to learn more. We did a few activities with this. The first was to take 10 pieces from the set and make any animal. We had two minutes to do this (with the wonderful advice of start with your hands and let your brain catch up) and as you can see in the picture below, not one of us made the same as another. It's a great way to get started when you're working with Lego (or anything else for that matter) to show that everyone has great ideas and they can be very different from each other.
We then used the app to make a windmill (or a fan) and then have a bit of a play with the coding. It is very easy to use, and has a lot of different functions. Our last challenge was to make a music machine. I spent a good bit of time of this, iterating and making new versions, adding features as I got inspiration. It was all good fun. Here's a tweet & video of what I made with my partner:
After a break for morning tea, we spent the remainder of the day with the EV3 robots. While the WeDo is for younger children, the EV3 has more capabilities and is more suited for older learners. We first learned how to make a quick build (not Lego Certified) to do some testing on getting the robot to move an exact distance. We started with 15cm, then 40cm and finally we tested our calculations on 2m exactly. We did this, however, with a minifigure called Daredevil Dan. Due to some inaccuracies at the 40cm level, our calculations were out quite a bit. Though eventually we managed to get it close (though, I guess it didn't work if we just nicked him at the end). Our trials are reversed here:
The last challenge of the day was to make a robot that moved WITHOUT wheels. Again, I spent a good amount of time iterating and improving our robot. On carpet, our robot moved quite quickly, but on the lino, it was not so fast. It was still quite menacing and I think I may have a future in some sort of robot wars type competition.
Another thing that we discussed was the First Lego League. Every year Lego sets out challenges for both Juniors (using WeDo) and Seniors (using EV3). You can register, get a pack of pieces and then join local competitions which can lead on to national and international competitions. Lego First New Zealand seems to be growing rather quickly, so it's probably a good time for schools to get in on it. The national competition here is on December 1st, I believe. All you need is an EV3 or WeDo and to sign up on the site to get the materials (which do have a cost, but it's worth it, I'd say). Even though I can't do it this year (my school has no learners until next year) it's definitely something I'll be looking into for next year.
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.
This past term I ran a Stop Motion workshop at school for a writing project. I had about 50 learners from my Habitat sign up for this choice, so I was pretty excited for that, though a bit wary of managing the groups.
We only have 10 iPads (plus a few BYOD devices) so through necessity I had to put the children into groups of 4, though at the smallest, I would have had three, so it worked out pretty well. I let them choose their own groups because I wanted them to be mixed up as much as possible. I figure (and have figured for a while) that they all have something to bring to the table. Even if they are not great writers they still have some great ideas. Grouping them helps ensure that they'll come up with some amazing ideas and that they'll likely have the skills they need to do what they want to do. Or at least a better chance of it.
Previously, we had offered Stop Motion as a choice and it had turned into something of a disaster. For starters, we were unable to properly support the learners in this endeavour when it came to planning out a story or in actually filming it. This term we had decided to give less choice (but still some pretty awesome choices - the two other workshops that ran were making a newspaper and making storybooks) so we could focus our direction. So I started this term with having the learners plan out their story roughly. I did give them the option of using a variety of materials, but all the groups but one chose to use Lego in the end (which was great because I had just brought all my childhood Lego back from Canada).
Here is how I had them plan out the story. I decided that I wanted them to have more than 1 scene, and since we all love the 5 parts of a story, I gave them five boxes. But what I didn't do was tell them that the story had to have specific parts (eg the introduction, build up, dilemma, resolution and ending - or whatever five parts you call them). I wanted to make them think that things had to be in a sequence, but at the same time I didn't want to limit them.
The next thing I had the groups do was to write a script. I gave them an example, which included stage directions. To me, this was important. While I did want the learners experimenting with the Lego to come up with their story, I also wanted them to put some good thought into their story beforehand, so they didn't start the story without knowing where it was going. This writing took a while, but in the end, the discussions that came out of it were incredible and the quality of the stories definitely benefitted (for the most part)
Not all scripts were this good, but I particularly liked this groups' because they put lots of directions (and if you watch their movie they may have actually said the directions as well - which was helpful in determining what was going on).
The last part of the project (ok, it was actually two parts, but the second part of this was much easier than the first) was to teach the children how to actually use the technology (which in this case was an iPad and the Stop Motion App). The biggest issue the learners had had when they had worked without guidance was how to actually film the video. They would often just take a picture while holding the camera and then move somewhere else and take another picture. The videos were all disjointed and didn't really make sense. So, with 50 children all around me, I showed them how to set up the iPad so that they didn't need to hold it - thank goodness for Airplay! I showed them how they need to make small changes for each picture, not big ones. They mostly took the advice (as can be seen in the videos) so I was pretty happy with how that turned out.
The last part of the last part was to add sound. This was fairly easy once they discovered how to do that. We had a few issues with groups recording the sound, previewing it and then nothing else because they didn't realize they had to click Accept. A frequent frustration that came out of this part of the project was that the people went too fast. Perhaps I didn't quite capitalize on this realization to teach them about how long it really takes for people to talk when you're filming frame by frame. But for the most part the managed to improvise (most just slowed down the speed from 5 frames per second to 4 or even 3).
Have a look at some of their finished projects here:
During the last week of term we had a sharing day for all of the writing projects. We put the videos on a loop in our Media Space and it was quite the popular event. It was really amazing to see their final projects up on a biggish screen and to see them enjoying each others' work.
Overall I was extremely pleased with the results and with what was seen during the process. A lot of the really great bits of learning probably won't even come out of the videos. The sets and stories they came up with orally and the problem solving they had to do with the filming were amazing to watch. At one point during writing time a fellow learning coach and I remarked how we could have walked out of the room and the children probably wouldn't have noticed. They were that engaged and independent.
The one thing that was probably missing was a way to decrease the feedback loop. I probably should have set up a way for groups to share their plans and scripts with each other so that they could get a critical eye and some suggestions. This potentially could have happened throughout the filming stage as well as afterwards to help them in any future projects they might make. That being said, they were working collaboratively so they did have at least an element of feedback from their groups.
So if you have any lego lying around, my suggestion to you is to try this. It's not the first (and definitely not the last) time I've used Lego to try to get my learners engaged and every time the same thing happens: lots of children excited to tell a story! Watch this space for more of the things I do with Lego and learning!
For those of you who know me and my classroom, you'll know that I have a massive collection of Lego, including many, many minifigures. My learners this year have, with much collaboration, become very creative with the Lego, building houses, cafes and many other things with incredible detail. A couple of my learners have even gone so far as to make a number of stop motion videos, but in the last week they've taken things to an entirely new level.
When I first introduced Stop Motion to my class, we had been using Stop Motion Animator on chromebooks. I had some webcams that worked (though the majority of the ones I bought did not) and that was going fine. Then we had some issues with the saving, so it became very frustrating to see my learners put a lot of effort into their videos and then be unable to save things. So we tried Monkey Jam on the class desktops. There was an improvement in being able to save an export, but it was still a cumbersome process.
Then we tried the Stop Motion Animator App on the iPads. Brilliant. Great resolution, easy to use, easy to add audio and easy to upload to Youtube. Over the past few days, the big sets have been used to create some really elaborate and creative stories from two of my students. I especially enjoyed the way they used Lego bodies with no heads as clothes.
For anyone thinking about maker spaces, this is one way I have used my maker space to help develop literacy skills. Have a look at what they've done. My input was solely to provide the Lego and show briefly how to make a stop motion video. I'm really impressed with the direction they took with minimal direction. I think it goes to show that learners (of all ages) need an opportunity to explore. The first Lego creations and stop motion videos we did this year were not very exciting, creative or well done. But given time to try lots of things, they've been able to produce some amazing this. I only wish I could give this group of learners more time to develop these problem solving and collaborative skills.
This term I've been trying some new ways of doing writing. To make things interesting for my students and to give them a chance to see different ways to use writing. One of the things I did was have them make digital storybooks, using Google Slides.
I have a lot of Lego in my classroom and I've seen it used to tell stories before (and I've seen my students make up stories when they're building/playing with the Lego), so I thought, why not make some stories using the Lego.
I made a sample, which is included below and several of my students have made their own stories. It took a while to get what they have (about 3 weeks of our writing time - mostly spent on building sets). We used SOLO to make a rubric to evaluate our stories. Find all of this below:
