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.

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.

ISTE (Round 3)

So once again I made the trip across the Pacific to the US of A to ISTE. After the first time over, it was hard not to make the trek again. There simply is nothing like it (at least that I've been to) over on this side of the world. This year, I felt like a veteran, knowing the best way to get the most for my time in San Antonio. I wanted to avoid wasting time listening to people talk at me and make some real connections with real people doing amazing things. I also had a long list of ISTE friends to reconnect with. A lot of people go to conferences to hear the latest new thing (and I definitely like learning about that stuff), but connections are more valuable to me, with some really innovative, off the wall ideas thrown in there.

There were some clear themes throughout the conference this year.  The most obvious thing that (it seems) everyone is doing is VR. So many different presentations and poster sessions included it. In particular, I did visit the CoSpaces booth and was quite impressed with the ability to create your own 3D environments. I'll definitely be watching their website for the educator and school accounts (I could be a bit off on the names, though). There's also some really cool new AR stuff coming from Google

I also had a lot of good conversations and got some good ideas from a lot of the big robotics companies: SpheroEdu, Wonder Workshop, Ozobots and a few others. They all have some pretty helpful STEAM activities and other lesson plan ideas that can be used. 

The same goes for some other companies that produce other technology things: OSMO, Little Bits and Bloxels stood out, as well as Microduino. There was a company that made some neat little robots called SAM robots, though I can't seem to find a website or pictures of those. As always, a visit to the Lego Education booth was one of the highlights (if I had a million dollars, I'd get two of everything!)

Though it was not as prevalent as years past, there were still lots of ideas for using Makey Makeys, both with the good people at the booth and with presenters. I did learn that you can have an output (eg, make a light flash), so that was kind of cool. Plus seeing what some learners have done with it was helpful to see how it could be used.

All of the above are definitely on my wishlist and would be super helpful in creating a fun and STEAMy classroom that engages my learners. Over the next few weeks/months, I'm going to look at how I can use what I've got to do these things, but also at ways of obtaining some more of these things.

But by far the most important thing from ISTE, as I mentioned above, was the people. Last year I met Shannon while we were each making our own binary bracelets on the first day. We then ran into each other multiple times over the course of the conference. Last year we said we would collaborate on something, but then never did. This year, if you can believe it, we ran into each other once again on the first day, and once again making binary bracelets (why both of us needed another one this year, I'm not sure). We caught up briefly and visited each others' presentations. Now, we've been talking about doing some sort of global collaboration project with each other this year and co-presenting at ISTE next year. So that's kind of cool. And hopefully putting it up here will also help me not forget to do it this year!

I've also made another handful of contacts of educators in the US who want penpals (have actually made contact with one, and planning on one or two more right after this blog post).  Furthermore, saw my friends from Kiva again and will be wanting to perhaps get some more things going on with them.

One of the big things that has come up in EdTech in recent years is the idea of ambassadors for certain companies. I'm definitely looking into a few as many companies do not have educators from New Zealand working with them that closely yet. Hopefully within the next few months I'll be on here writing about all the new connections I have (as well as my global collaborations).

To anyone who has never been to ISTE, my advice to you is GO! Chicago next year is a wonderful city and ISTE is an amazing experience. The incredibly inventive things you'll see and the inspiring people you'll meet (and in turn inspire yourself) is definitely worth the cost of getting there (and as an added bonus for NZ educators, you get a week of summer in the middle of winter). If you're interested in coming along next year, let me know and we can meet there! The site for Chicago is here. Calls for presenters open in less than a month!

Nature of Learning Conference

A few weekends ago, I was asked by the associate leader of learning at my school, Ormiston, to assist in presenting at the Nature of Learning conference which was being held at the neighbouring Ormiston Junior College. I was more than happy to join in and help out, as well as attend the other sessions.

The biggest learning for me in this process was actually preparing our presentation and our school tour. The group of us that was presenting talked over many of the founding ideas and principles that went into designing how our school works and functions. Particularly of interest was the OECDs 7 Principles of Learning put out in its Innovative Learning Environments Project. Our school tour was based around those seven principles while our other presentation was based around the other three elements of that report:

• Action Learning
• Guided Learning
• Experiential Learning

What was quite interesting is that though I was previously mostly unaware of those 7 principles and three main areas, I found that I have been following the majority of them throughout my teaching career. Of the three main areas, we found that two of those are well developed or on their way to being well developed.

Action Learning fits in extremely well with our iExplore time, during which learners choose driving questions to answer and then work in small groups to answer them. As a habitat and as an individual I have been part of a very interesting journey with this idea over the last couple of years. My first go at it was something of a disaster, where we didn't even finish anything. Last year at a new school, I tried once again and was able to get some good, quality work from my students. This year at Ormiston I have been able to start sparking some projects that go well beyond the research and make a slide variety. We're getting some real, meaningful and deep projects.

Guided learning is basically the typical reading, writing and maths. And again, over the last few years, I have been individually and collectively on a journey to find out the best ways to do this. Am I there? Definitely not, but I feel like at the moment, we're giving the 90 learners in our habitat a variety of choices and opportunities to reach their potential.

The Experiential learning is what we are still working on, though the preparation for this presentation was very helpful in clarifying what that means.  Essentially how we have been running these is like topic, though we have been providing choice. Ideally, we should be giving our learners some sort of provocation and then let the learners explore what they want in that topic. The suggestion given was bubbles. Some learners may choose to do art with bubbles, some may learn about soap and how that works, others might look at light and why the colours are the way they are. Others still may want to look at why bubbles form or why they float. With many topics there could be several directions they could go.

Preparing the tour was also interesting. We created a series of videos or slideshows that could be viewed using QR codes throughout the school. You can find them all here, explaining how we use the 7 principles of learning daily at Ormiston Primary.

As for the presentations, I did find some of them difficult as they were all people talking and talking. Interesting that a conference on the way in which people learn is set up for only one way of learning. I did get some really good ideas and thoughts from some of the presentations. I attended a workshop from a school that has vertical teams, meaning instead of having all the Year 3-4 teachers in a team, they have Year 1-6 teachers. I thought that in an ILE a vertical Habitat would be a pretty interesting idea, with year 1s and 6s all in the same space. It also gives the potential of having the same learning coaches their whole time at a school while also having different peers every year.

Another helpful presentation I attended was from our friends on the other side of town, Hobsonville Point Primary. They discussed how their learners have individual time tables and how they get lots of community involvement in their workshops. This is something that we have not yet explored and is very relevant as we would rather have more small workshops to give better attention to interests than the ones we have at the moment. It's all food for thought and these are ideas that have been thrown into the constant churning of my brain. It was definitely an experience that has helped me think about what I do and why I do it.

ISTE 2016!

It has taken me a few weeks (almost a month, in fact) to fully come to grips with my ISTE 2016 experience. To sum it up in word: Amazing! But obviously there were some really good takeaways that came from the experience. I'll try my best to share all of what I learned, but no doubt some good stuff will get left out.

edit: Now it's almost two whole months after ISTE! But still thinking lots about it. Some of this may be repetitive because of the time between when I started writing and when I finished, but I think the tone that will likely be consistent throughout will convince you of the value this experience had for me and could have for you in the future.

People, People, People

The first place you need to start when dealing with ISTE is the people. I'm not talking about the sheer number (though that is staggering on its own). What I'm talking about is the people you meet. The biggest draw for something like ISTE is to meet lots and lots of like-minded and incredible people. And don't get me wrong, EVERYONE at ISTE is incredible. When I told one of the people I met that "I'm just a classroom teacher," she responded by saying that nobody is "Just" anything. We all have something to offer, no matter the title or experience. Though I did realize this before, it was interesting to see how our language can affect our perceptions (and the perceptions we create in others). Later on that day, I met someone who said pretty much the same thing about being "just" something. I was spurred on to share my new perspective.

There are also countless opportunities to meet and connect with educators around the world (well, mostly the US). There is so much value in this for all of us and our students who will benefit from these connections. I made a concerted and deliberate effort to seek out new people and talk to some who I wouldn't have otherwise spoken with - including the CEO of ISTE! I made several great connections which will help me make further connections in the future. It's all about the people. If that were the only result of the week in Denver it would have been worth it completely.

On top of meeting people at official conference events (probably the best source of that was the Global Ed Day - a great group of people to connect with, if you're looking), there were several social events which turned out to be just as valuable. I had made it my mission to find the "seedy underbelly of ISTE" this year, and while it definitely wasn't seedy, it made the conference that much more impactful. My only regret is that I didn't find more events to go to. In all, I attended events put on by Wonder Workshop (happy hour at a restaurant), the Ed Tech Team & Symbaloo (Karaoke), Gaggle (a party) and OSMO (a Sneak Peak event). All of those events, helping to strengthen my PLN (personal learning network for the uninitiated). I was able to build on some of the connections I made a year prior and hopefully will be able to build on these ones in 2017 (because yes, I'm going).

New Things and Old Things with More Pizazz

Having been at ISTE last year, I found that there were a lot of things repeated, but with more development. There were literally tons of resources (if you weighed them all together, there is no doubt of this) showing how makerspaces and making can be used in the classroom. Many people were sharing how they've been using their robots (many of which I bought last year after ISTE) and other cool gadgets in the classroom. For example, there were many people sharing what they've done with paper circuits (a shout out to Chibitronics & Spark Fun who both gave me some free samples to use in my classroom) as well as robots (guess who won a free kit from Hummingbird?) One really cool startup that was sharing in the expo was Hyperduino which had some really simple applications with their custom built arduino boards. They ran out of free samples by the time I got to their booth, but I may pony up the dough to get one.

It seemed like everyone had a Dash & Dot, Sphero & Ollie and Ozobots. Not to mention Makersaces. Perhaps this, too, was one of my big takeaways from the conference, and (since it's taking me forever to write this reflection) one of the things I've been most active promoting since I've returned. While I'm fully trying to gear up my classroom's Makerspace, ISTE this year has planted the seed of a big idea in my head. I'm working now to start #MakerEdNZ, a community of schools and teachers who are using Makerspaces in their classrooms. I'll write a long post about it later, but for now, just know that ISTE inspired me.

Global Connections

The only actual planned event I went to at ISTE was the Global Ed Day 2016. What a great group of people. Again, this is something I want to explore in much greater detail. Yes, we've done Twitter chats and Mystery Hangouts, but those connections are only on the surface (but again, much, much better than no connections at all). A lot of the talk around the Global Ed Day was starting collaborative projects between schools on different continents. This is another area for leadership within New Zealand, I feel, and something that is many people are primed for. We'll see what comes out of this, but perhaps someone reading this will take the call to arms and run with it. I only ask that you please include me.

Things I've Been Using

So it has taken me 2 months to get this far in my reflection. But that provides a great opportunity to reflect upon how those new things are going. Probably the most immediate thing I tried was Seesaw. For anyone who hasn't heard of this before, I urge you to have a look at it. I was lucky enough to have it explained to me by a teacher at the Seesaw booth in the expo. It's basically like Facebook for schools. Using the app (on tablets, phones or chromebooks) my students can take pictures or videos of their work, record an explanation over top of it, tag themselves in it and just generally share their amazing ideas. They can like each others' work and make comments - both written and oral! And I've only scratched the surface of what I can do with it. So far my students have found it super easy and have enjoyed sharing.

I also re-met my good friends at Kiva, which got me back to teaching the Kiva U curriculum (in the small amount of time that I can fit it in).'

I've also given my students focus with the Student Blogging Challenge. Though we may have been a few months late, meeting some of the people who have set this up, got me intrigued. My students have had some ups and downs with it (some of them spent a whole week or writing time making an avatar, not saving it, then making a new one), but overall it has helped teach them about blogging a bit more.

Another, practical thing I saw at ISTE and brought back to use were all the paper circuits that were being shown. I was extremely lucky to have been given those starter kits from Chibitronics AND Sparkfun, so I had a go with that at school AND at some educamps. It was interesting to say the least and something I want to look more into.  I was also given the chance to make a wearable circuit with some Lilypad Arduino components:

One of the sessions I went to was actually done as a walk around Downtown Denver. The presenter was telling us that we should be getting our students more active in class, and building movement into every activity. I had previously had swiss balls in my class but had given them up because of some behaviour issues. However, he inspired me to pump them back up and get my students moving more often. A small thing, but I think it's something that's important.

Conclusions

I could go on for pages and pages talking about how ISTE has changed me and my practice, but my biggest advice is: Go next year to San Antonio! It will change so many things about how you see teaching and give you so many ideas to help you do so. It will give you connections that will change your idea of teacher-teacher relationships and the way our profession should interact. It was honestly the best four days of the last year for me. Unlike a lot of the New Zealand based conferences that I've been to, ISTE has made me feel that we lone nuts are much stronger in numbers. It's nice to have our smallish group here, but expanding beyond our shores, in my opinion, is never a bad thing. Being part of something so big, is truly empowering. Meeting so many genuine people who only want the best for their students is inspiring. So, I urge all of you Kiwi teachers (and why not all my Canadian teacher friends as well, I belong to two countries), come with me next year! Come join my tribe!

GAFE Summit 2016: First Presentation, Eek!

During the first two days of the school holidays (well, 3rd and 4th) I went with 4 Pak Heights Colleagues to the GAFE Summit at Hobsonville Point Secondary School. It was a very busy two days for me: not only was I going there to learn some new things, but I was also going there to present - twice!

It had been a year since I first went to a summit like this, and it was very different this year. It felt like I was on the other side. Since I went last year I've attended ISTE 2015 in Philadelphia, completed my Google Certified Educator Level 1 and Level 2 course and have tried so many new things I can't even remember all of them. Though I definitely don't consider myself an expert, I do feel like I've moved closer to the cutting edge of what is happening in schools. I'm not quite on the tip, but definitely getting there.

So most of the things being presented were not new things to me. I chose the presentations I did not because I wanted to learn fresh things, but because I wanted more detail on them. The first presentation was all about Genius Hour (20% time, Passion Projects). I heard this idea last year and got some good tips at ISTE and absolutely fell in love with the idea. In practice, it kind of fizzled and there was no end to projects (probably the result of me trying to do too much, too soon). But I was able to get some good ideas through this presentation and will be bringing it back to my students for next term. It's absolutely imperative that my students get to try this in term 2. That way when we fail, we can do it the right way in terms 3 and 4 :D

I later went to a presentation on Google Cardboard and using Street View in the classroom to see different things. At this point, I'm storing this info in the back of my brain. It has potential, but at the moment I'll let it go. I do have two cardboards and my phone, so no doubt it will make an appearance in my classroom this term (I'm thinking I can show them my house back in Canada).

During the last session of the first day all of the PHS teachers went to a workshop on using stop motion on chromebooks. It was fantastic. I've always been a fan of stop motion and have used it as a learning tool previously. Now that I know how to do this without the iPads, I'm sure I'll be using this for a few different things. I just need to make some playdough (or get the students to do it!) so that we have some more things we can use.

The next day started with a talk about using CS First to do coding. I've already started setting that up. I went to a Code Club Aotearoa meeting last term, so this is something of a priority. I'm going to start in week 2, to give me some time to sort the details out and get students interested (which also helps me earn my money as eLearning Leader). There's not much else to say here, but the lessons are super easy to follow - you don't need to be a coding expert. There will definitely be more on my blog about this.

The next session I went to was all about the things you could do with Google Drawings. There were several of these at the conference. Funny enough, I have started using these a bit more recently. So the timing is good. We were given a lot of examples of ways to use Google Drawings. Very impressive list, though a bit fast. I'll definitely be trying to use some of these ideas in class (I've been having some fun with my own lately - see my last post).

The final session I went to was about BreakoutEDU (LINK!!!). Having done some escape rooms in the past, I really like this concept. The actual session was difficult because we had too many people, but I would be interested to see it in class. And guess what? A friend of mine has bought and put some kits together (It's all open source) and has offered to come to my class next week to give it a go - so exciting!

The biggest change for me this year, though, was actually presenting. I was very nervous about this. I guess it's hard for me to think that anyone actually wants to listen to what I've got to say or try my ideas in their own classrooms (hmmm, I wonder where I got that idea from?). The first presentation I did was on spreadsheets. I may have gone a bit fast through some things, but the audience was very polite to me. I got some good questions and some good feedback. I tried pretty hard to give attendees something to do and it wasn't a complete disaster, so that's good.

The next day I was presenting on my Math Problem Solving with Google Slides. Wow! There were probably about 80 people there. I definitely improved my delivery, but I get nervous easily still. I got a bit muddled in the order I shared stuff (forgot to talk about the context of how I do the lessons), but for the most part this went well. No one wanted to share when they did their problem solving, but I was alright. I was smarter this time and prepared a form for feedback, some of which was helpful (never thought I'd be told I was too quiet!), so I can improve next time.

I think the biggest thing I got out of presenting was that I need to keep the participants active. My favourite presentations were the ones where I got to do something (Coding, Stop Motion, BreakoutEDU). It made me think of what I would do for next year. Not sure who is reading this so I'm not going to spill the beans, but I've got a fantastic idea. Will have a go at practicing that at some other events in the near future.

Another, subtle thing that happened here was that, as a presenter, I got to go to the presenters dinner. It was very good to get out there and meet some people who are the ones shaking things up at a bigger level. I think I hope to be among them one day - maybe not doing exactly what they do, but being on their level. Again, big plans, but keeping some of those to myself.