Book Review: Dive Into Inquiry by Trevor MacKenzie

When I was at ISTE this past year, I had the pleasure of meeting fellow Canadian (and UVic alum!) Trevor MacKenzie when we were both volunteering and presenting at the EdTech Team booth. I had seen his books around beforehand and was interested in reading them, but I developed a new sense of urgency after listening to him speak about he personalizes the learning for his students. I was amazed and wanted to find out more, so I got myself a copy of his first book: Dive Into Inquiry and had a read.

In the book, MacKenzie outlines not only several reasons for changing the way we teach, but also gives a very comprehensive guide on how you could do so. This way of thinking is something extremely relevant with Matua Ngaru School planning on using a lot of inquiry in our collective practice when we open in 2019.

The book begins with discussing how we can co-construct learning with our students and how that leads to the redefinition of the role of a teacher. By allowing learners to co-construct their learning they have a greater buy-in to the process and more authentic learning naturally comes. This also necessitates a change what we do, to support this. We are not the expert that dispenses knowledge. We are also the "coach, facilitator, networker and shoulder-to-lean-on." MacKenzie describes several qualities that we educators need to have and helps those not so far along in the journey think about how they can support their learners in a different manner.

After a discussion on how to assess inquiry, the book goes on to discuss the four types of student inquiry: Structured Inquiry, Controlled Inquiry, Guided Inquiry & Free Inquiry, all of which are displayed below in this wonderful sketchnote by Trevor himself.

All too often, schools hear about Inquiry and jump into the deep end, not allowing the children to learn the necessary skills to complete a successful inquiry (though, again, the book does discuss the idea that a successful inquiry doesn't necessarily mean having a polished creation at the end of it - sometimes failure and challenge is a better indication of learning).

MacKenzie then spends the remainder of the book looking in-depth into Inquiry, and specifically Free Inquiry. He uses lots of sketchnotes to help show the process and key ideas. All of his inquiry projects start with the Four Pillars of Inquiry, illustrated below:

These are basically a guide as to how a learner can approach an inquiry. It should fit into at least one of the pillars for the inquiry to be meaningful. The next steps of the inquiry are outlined in the following sketchnote: 

I could go on and on about the details that are presented, but my advice to you is to get a copy of the book and read it yourself. There are tons of great ideas to facilitate each of these steps, as well as anecdotes and links to projects that have been completed. Many educators have probably had some experience with this way of teaching, and no doubt there are many similarities. This does not mean that this is the ONLY way of doing inquiry. You've got to do what works for your learners and for you in your specific context. But this book will definitely make you think and will inspire you as well. I personally can't wait to read his next book, Inquiry Mindset (yeah, I know, I'm a bit behind the times...)

If you're interested in finding out more about what Trevor has done and is doing check out his website at https://www.trevormackenzie.com/.

Google Innovator: One Year On (or, It's My Innoversary!)

It's been just over a year since I returned home from Sydney and the SYD17 Google Innovator Cohort. In the past twelve months I have been working hard to implement the project that I planned, along with my team and my coaches. It has been a long journey, which by no means is over yet, and in writing this I'm feeling rejuvenated to continue with these innovative ideas and to start with some more.

Though this is a time for celebration and sharing, it's also a time to reflect upon the failures as well. Things have definitely not gone as I had planned in 2017, but that's alright. I've fallen a bit short of a few of my goals, but at the same time, I'm achieved more in some directions that I didn't even think I was going to even try. It's been a year of growth, but also a year of frustration. I'd argue that the growth would not occur were it not for the frustration (so bring on the frustration, I say!).

So what have I accomplished in 12 months? As you may recall, my original plan was to create a series of videos that would support learners and educators in both teaching coding as well as integrating that teaching throughout different subject areas (though I could have a long discussion about getting rid of subject areas altogether, but that's another post for another time). I wanted to give children and adults a chance to develop computational thinking without having to sacrifice anything else and without having to spend lots of money or time on PD that may or may not be helpful. I've written a few posts about this before so I won't go in depth with the why or the how, other than to say that I feel like my videos have done what I wanted them to do - as far as I can tell at least.

I was a bit disappointed about not getting as much feedback on these. I want to improve things, but it has been hard to get much in the way of what I could improve (beyond what I've thought of myself). So if you're reading this and want to help, that's one thing you could do - there are some feedback forms on the first few videos. The reach of the videos has been alright - my first two videos had 1200 and 700 approximate views as of this writing, though my 3rd and 4th were hovering around 150 while the fifth is still under 100. I also only made five videos, and had hoped I'd be up around 20 by now. Making videos takes a long time and I've had other things going on in the background this past year. That being said, I'm happy with what I've accomplished, but want to continue with these videos. I'm starting a 6th, but progress is slow. Here is the playlist of all five videos (and if you're reading this in the future, hopefully there are more than 5!):

If this were the only thing I did this past year, I'd probably feel a bit bittersweet about the whole thing. But it wasn't. I've also had two side projects on the go and one of them has probably outshone these videos (it certainly has got me WAY more views on my YouTube channel): Digital Breakouts.  What started as an activity at my school turned into me being known as the Digital Breakout guy in New Zealand. I've made 22 Digital Breakouts to this point with more in the pipeline. I'm pretty amazed by this. I've presented on this topic in three different countries and have gotten TONS of positive feedback with them - even though they do tend to be quite difficult. These breakouts have been a great way to connect with other educators (because making a breakout digitally is fairly straightforward and has been replicated by many). I feel like this is a great way to keep learner engagement and teach them skills that may not be assessed by any curriculum, but that will benefit them in the long run. This is definitely something I'm looking to continue, and I've already recruited at least one person to assist me in doing so. I can imagine this being a bit part of what I do going forward and it was originally a way for me to add a few views to my YouTube channel (though it probably contributes to close to 90% of the views I get).

Link

The third part of my project was actually started because I had seen one of my friend's projects (the amazing Mrs Priestley & her What's 'App'ening Newsletter) and because I wanted a way to try and get more people looking at my videos. I started a newsletter of my own called The Monthly Maker. I had a lot of things I'd like to share, so wanted to use this as a platform to do a few things, including, spotlighting Maker Spaces throughout New Zealand, sharing Design Thinking tips and some featured Digital Breakouts, as well as various other tips around Maker Education.

This has proven to be quite an undertaking. I first started making a video or post for each idea, and that took time. For the second issue I cut that back a bit, but was still swamped with things to do. My plan going forward is to recruit some other Kiwi educators to help me build a lasting publication. I have not been able to get issues out for June and July this year due to reports and being extremely busy with life and other such things. I am on track to finish the next issue soon though.

All in all, I'm pleased with how much I've managed to accomplish in 12 months. The upside to all of this is that I've come up with a few more great ideas that are worth working on. As I've mentioned in other posts, I feel energized to do more now that I am a part of the Innovator Community.  I'm looking forward to my next project and to continuing on the three that I've already started. Big things are happening and I owe a lot of that to the Innovator Program, so to those who do all the work behind the scenes, I say Thank You! Here's looking forward to what the next 12 months brings...

#HiveSummit Day Six - Michael Matera & Gamification

Another Hive Summit video, another day of my mind being blown wide open.  Today's talk was with Michael Matera and his daughter Mila, who was interviewing him. They spoke at length about Gamification in the classroom.

The first point that Michael made was that there is a difference between Gamification and Game-Based Learning. Gamification is using elements of games that increase engagement and enjoyment in the curriculum. Game-Based Learning is taking a existing (commercial) game and adding elements into it to make it more educational.

Michael gave many reasons why we schools should adopt gamification: It is naturally student-centred, it is iterative so it allows students to push themselves to become better and it's excited. My favourite thing he said though, had to be this:

Play has been happening forever. It isn't a pedagogy, it's a way of life. @mrmatera #HiveSummit

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 9, 2018

I think it's really important that we add game elements to our teaching as well as play elements. I've had many discussions with people about play-based learning lately and I honestly feel that play is really just another word for learning. Gamification clearly falls into the same category. We learn so much, especially with a quick feedback loop which games and play provide, it doesn't make sense that we're not all trying to exploit these amazing ideas.

All of this fit perfectly in my view of what I was going to hear today. Then my mind got blown in the next part. You see, I had thought I knew what gamification is, and certainly I wasn't WRONG in my thinking. But I wasn't thinking big enough. I thought that gamification was playing games in the class. But in some places the game IS the class! That's right, the whole class is pretty much one big game. That's amazing. To be honest, I shouldn't be so shocked. I did read a whole book about a class that kind of did this in the World Peace Game.

So you can imagine that right now, being employed at a school that hasn't opened up yet and having lots of time to plan and work with others to design a whole curriculum and way of teaching, my mind is on overdrive as to how this can be used. I'm honestly incredibly excited.

Michael gives three big tips in the video for anyone wanted to start out:

1) Theme: Choose a theme for your game. This doesn't have to be the topic you're covering, it just has to be how you'll frame the game. You'll need to rename parts of the class to fit the theme. The more elaborate you are, the more interesting it will be for the children.

2) Team: Have the children work in teams. The bonds they make and the skills they learn from this collaboration will be more important that the points they earn. Keep track of points in as simple or as complicated a way as you'd like, but don't tie these points to actual grades and don't take points away that have already been earned.

3) Tasks: Have a lot of these, some required some not. Have side quests that students can complete to earn items in the game which might give them special abilities (eg, getting more points in a review game, being able to get an answer once on a test they don't know, being able to work with a buddy on something, etc). Give badges to show accomplishments as well as experience points (XP).

I honestly plan on having a good look at these ideas and trying to make some sort of a game for the new learners I'm going to have in 2019. In the meantime, I'm going to try to check out Michael's Book (Explore Like a Pirate), his Website of resources and his YouTube Channel:

I am truly inspired by this (and every other talk from the Hive Summit, which Michael has been hosting. I look forward to the last three videos and I imagine I'm going to have a lot of thinking about some amazing things soon.

#HiveSummit Day Four - Tara Martin & Being Real

Every time I watch a Hive Summit video this week, I think: "This is interesting, I know a bit about this topic," and every time I'm blown away by the insights provided by the speaker and host. If you haven't signed up by now, I urge you to do so and to watch the videos of the talks, or even just follow along with the twitter chat.

The most recent video I've watched (because I'm slowly getting behind and I want to make sure I can fully focus on the videos), featured Tara Martin, where she spoke about Being Real and how to be relatable so that you can affect positive change everywhere in your life. I honestly thought I knew a lot about this idea and topic, but the conversation between Tara and Michael Matera has helped me frame ideas and thoughts a little bit better.

Let me first give a plug for Tara's book: Be Real. If the book is only 10% as good as the talk I listened to earlier today, it's worth every penny you'll spend on it. You can find info about the book HERE.

There is no way I can relate everything from this talk, but I'll try to sum it up as best as I can. 

Basically, the idea is that we, as educators or as human beings, need to be authentic and to recognize the things that make us real and unique (which is essentially the sum of our experiences, which is different from person to person) and acknowledge all of those things, rather than try to put on appearances or be something we're not. That's the first step to being relatable.

The next step is to listen to everyone around you, especially those that you've been tasked with supporting in any sort of educational way (students, your own children, other teachers you're working with). But it's not just about listening It's also about asking the right questions. The advice given is to ask questions that are non-judgemental so that when you listen you can listen to learn - and that the person you're speaking with feels that. We don't want children (or adults) to say what they think we want them to say, but we want to actually find something out about them. We can call this humbly listening.

Later, both Tara and Michael talked about the idea of cannonballing. To explain the metaphor quite quickly, cannonballing is something you do that's a new thing. Like jumping into a pool, it's both scary and makes others stand up and take notice. It's not the same thing over and over. They spoke at length about how difficult it can be to cannonball and how you can support people with cannonballing. I think I summed it up quite nicely in the following tweets:

What do you want to do? How will you do it and how can I support you? Let's check back in a couple of weeks - A good way to help someone achieve something #HiveSummit @TaraMartinEDU

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 5, 2018

There are times when you just have to run on the diving board and you just have to jump, even though you have no clue what's going to happen - but you know you know how to swim, so you just have to do it. @TaraMartinEDU #HiveSummit

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 5, 2018

There are times when you have to jump with them, and then later empower them to jump on their own - loving this metaphor of the cannonball! @TaraMartinEDU #HiveSummit

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 5, 2018

Another important and vital point that is brought up is that you shouldn't listen to the critics who aren't in the pool with you. No matter what you are trying to do, there will always be those people on the side of the pool - the critics and the dabblers - who are too afraid or proud to get in, but who will tell you all the mistakes you made and try to convince you not to cannonball anymore. Her advice: keep going with what you do, try to make big splashes so they get wet a little bit at a time. Eventually they will get soaked and want to come and join you in the pool. It's all about inspiring people to change, NOT forcing them. I think that's something relevant for everyone, especially myself going into a new role at a school that is due to open next year.

The final part of the talk delved into one of Tara's cannonball ideas: Booksnaps. When trying to understand why her son was always on Snap Chat and other things, she had an idea. She put the picture of the book on a Snap Chat (I think that's how it works, I've never actually used the app myself) and then annotated it with various things. At the time she had two twitter followers but still shared it there. The author commented on what she did, shared it himself and then everything just kind of snowballed from there. This is an amazing example of everything she had just talked about. She had a new idea, she jumped in with it, splashed the right person and now lots and lots of people are doing it - because it's a great idea!

And what's happened now? Thousands of other educators around the globe have started using them and adapting them, modifying them and increasing their utility. A lot of good has come from someone taking what seemed like a small idea and just throwing it out there. Does every idea grow like this? Of course not, but Michael asked a very pertinent question near the end of the talk:

Think about all the ideas we don't cannonball in on? @mrmatera @TaraMartinEDU #HiveSummit A very good point and one we need to share!

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 5, 2018 

And he's absolutely right! Could you imagine how quickly we would innovate if all of us were sharing our ideas and listening to each others' voices? There is a lot from this talk that can be related to the earlier talk from Michael Cohen. The more we share, the more we can be creative.

#HiveSummit Day Three - Rick Wormeli & Grading

Day three of the Hive Summit brought a very in depth discussion of grading and it's usefulness in the classroom with Rick Wormeli. Being in New Zealand, I do feel like we are slightly further along this journey than most, but Rick made it very obvious that there is still a ways to go - for me at least.

My first little issue though (and maybe this is just the difference in mindset) is that throughout the whole conversation, much of the language used centred around "grades" rather than "assessment." I think that in itself is a big mind shift, that maybe hasn't happened everywhere yet.

Rick opened his talk with a discussion about why grading is not only inaccurate, no helpful but often unethical. Most of us have probably been in a class where we're given quizzes and then tests. Many times these quiz scores are averaged out and then mixed in with the test scores to give a final grade. But the quizzes often test the same things as the tests, and if we're truly trying to measure learning, then why would we include our earlier, less competent versions of our work in our final grade. How is that an accurate assessment of what we've learned. He suggests going to a standards based way of assessing learning - ie are you able to do something or not. Often we get so caught up in trying to come up with a grade or mark (or level, in the case of NZ), we forget what the actual goal is. And sometimes teachers like to play 'Gotcha' or punish children with low grades for low effort.

Another point that was touched on was HOW to make the change towards a better way of assessing children. Though we want to move things forward, they are not things that happen overnight and can be fraught with lots of dangers on the way. The first step though, can be to fulfil the marking requirements of a school or district while still changing things enough so that the students' best interests are in mind. So for example, weighting things differently, or giving a minimum grade (say 50% is the lowest grade possible) so that actual progress or achievement is measured. The second thing is to start volunteering for committees that can make the changes needed. Stand up and be heard. A third thing to remember, is that if it comes down to causing political problems versus serving the students, you will have a tough choice. Rick says that his students' needs will win every time, and I applaud that.

As educators we need to focus on the positive, rather than counting errors and adding them up. What can a child do, and what do they need to learn how to do next? What could they improve upon and how can they do so? We need to help set goals alongside our learners and then celebrate when they achieve them.

In the end, with most things, it comes down to being a reflective practitioner. It means going out there, hearing different voices, seeing what people are trying, reflecting on what you're doing and why you're doing it. Ultimately we can only control what we do, so confronting others about their practice and backing them into a corner is no way to foster systemic change - in only creates resentment. Change is difficult and often it involves us feeling as if we've lost a part of ourselves. That's natural. But it doesn't mean that we should continue to do things that have negative consequences just so that we can feel good about ourselves and previous choices.

I probably have not done a very good job of summarizing this talk, so I suggest you go watch it yourself. There is great advice for everyone in there, no matter how far along you are in your journey to create authentic, accurate and useful assessment.

#HiveSummit Day Two - Carrie Baughcum & Sketchnoting

Day two of the Hive Summit included a talk about Sketchnoting by Carrie Baughcum. I was interested in this talk because I've slowly had my eyes opened with respect to Sketchnoting over the past few months and was keen to learn a bit more. And boy did I.

I used to think of Sketchnoting as something people would do to take notes during a conference. Then I started seeing notes everywhere and reading about people who had done them. But I never really thought much about them until recently, and I certainly hadn't really thought too hard about using them in the classroom as a tool.

In her talk, Baughcum told the story of how she accidentally became a Sketchnoter by drawing with her daughters at the kitchen table to running challenges on her YouTube Channel:

What was most interesting about the talk for me, though, were the discussions around 1) the benefits of Sketchnoting with respect to learning and 2) the idea that you don't need to be an artist to be a Sketchnoter.

Baughcum explains in the talk that as humans, we are very visual beings, and the visualization with the added kinesthetic boost from actually making the drawing helps us improve retention, comprehension and focus and also has a calming effect.  I shared this point on twitter and it started a conversation where the idea of people who don't or can't visualize came up:

I think we need to be flexible and allow for all modes of learning, but also help develop all modes of learning in every child.

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 3, 2018

The more ways we can get information into the brain the more meaningful and impactful it will be.

— Carrie Baughcum (@HeckAwesome) August 3, 2018

I think Carrie's response sums up the whole idea. The more ways we can get children to understand something, the better their understanding will be.

The second point brought up in the talk was that you don't need to worry about the quality of your Sketchnotes. Sketchnoting isn't about the end product and doesn't have to be neat and tidy. It's about the process our brain goes through. She stresses that if you want your learners to have very deep understanding, you need to sketchnote alongside them, failures and all. If you're not a great artist, it may in fact be better as you can model the real purpose of the sketchnotes and help the children feel less conscious about the quality of their icons.

On a meta level, here's a sketchnote that was made for this talk:

I know that the next time I have my own class (probably February, so a ways away) I'm going to introduce sketchnoting. Thank you Carrie!

It was a very interesting talk and I would encourage all educators if they have the time right now to sign up for the Hive (Summit (the link's above) and have a watch of this and the other sessions. There's one a day for several more days, but they won't be up forever.

#HiveSummit Day One - Rabbi Michael Cohen

A few weeks ago I signed up for the Hive Summit, an online summit that would include several speakers over a week or two. You still sign up for it on the site.

The first video came out yesterday and featured Michael Cohen (no, not the one that's making the news in the US right now - Rabbit Michael Cohen, who was a keynote at ISTE recently). He spoke at length about Creativity, Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship.

It was an amazing talk to start off the summit, and I hope that future videos are just as impactful and inspiring.

Cohen first talked about the nature of creativity. He says (and I've thought this for a long time) that creativity isn't invention, it's the taking of existing ideas and putting them together in combinations that no one else has done before. His example is of Steve Jobs, who took a lot of existing technologies and combined them to make an iPhone. Cohen (and cohost Michael Matera) also argues that creativity isn't an innate thing, but that it needs to be practiced to be improved.

In a discussion around the 30 Circles challenge (where the challenge is to use 30 circles to draw everyday items in 3 minutes) he brought up the idea of Functional Fixedness. That describes the idea that often we think that something only has one use and one use only. We don't always see the different way something can be used and therefore cannot think creatively. However, once we discover our limitations it opens up our minds to different ways of thinking. This activity can lead to very rich discussions about what creativity is and how it can be fine tuned.

The second part of Cohen's talk has to do with Design Thinking (DT). This is something near and dear to me and has been something I've been working on understanding and implementing for the past year now.  Most people who learn about DT know that it centres around empathy and finding ways to solve a problem for someone else, or as Cohen puts it:  "Let me understand you, so that I can help you solve the problem for yourself." He goes on to explain that DT helps us build better relationships. Despite the obviousness of his statement, I had never actually thought of this before. DT makes us think about someone else's needs and helps us work with them. This is definitely something which will help frame my interactions with DT in the future.

In the last part of his talk, Cohen discusses building an Entrepreneurial Spirit amongst our learners. That simply means that we want them to have that grit and resilience to keep going when things don't work. To keep on trying things and trying things until we get where we want to get. He says that big things happen due to years of effort, but that we only see the end part of that effort. We miss the failures and the late nights and all the sacrifices and think that making something new is all about being famous and reaping the rewards of the hard work that we never saw. I tweeted out a quote from this part of the discussion and I think it's so relevant to everyone, especially schools. My future school also needs to look at this and find our own path to success and not be blinded by the amazing schools we see.

Don't compare your beginning with someone else's beginning. That's their success; they've been slaving away at it for a long time @mrmatera @TheTechRabbi #HiveSummit #DesignThinking

— Michael Davidson (@michaelteacher) August 1, 2018

This was an amazing talk and I recommend it for EVERYONE. Understanding the things Michael Cohen is saying is something that will help bring any school forward into the 22nd century and beyond. I am so excited to continue doing the things I was doing and adapting those new ideas he has given me.

Here's a sketchnote of  the talk (I didn't do it) that was included in the materials for the talk: 

If you haven't signed up already, I urge you to do so as this was an amazing talk! Watch this space for some more reactions to the talks that I watch.

Book Review: Rosie Revere, Engineer

For a while I've been eying several books that would help support STEAM or Maker activities in the classroom. Rosie Revere, Engineer has been one that I've wanted to get for a while, so a few weeks ago, I ordered it off of The Book Depository. The story itself is a very nice tale of a shy girl who used to create a lot of creative and different inventions, but has been silenced because of the reaction of a family member. She learns later, from a family member that it's not about getting things perfect on the first go. This fits in perfectly with both the idea of Growth Mindset and the Design Thinking process.

There is a lot of potential for this book to lead into many different learning opportunities and ideas. It would be a great way to start a project where children build or create something.

But that's not all. There is also a companion book, Rosie Revere's Big Project Book for Bold Engineers, which gives an incredible amount of ideas to build upon the first book. You can find it at The Book Depository as well.

Though the book is primarily meant for individual children (it has many places for a child to draw or write) it can easily be adapted for a whole class to get them thinking in new and creative ways. As an adult, I was personally excited about the things in this book and potentially trying some of them on my own.

In the book there is a good deal of supporting information about engineers and engineering, as well as some advice about organizing your own "treasure" so that you can make your own inventions. There are also some step-by-step instructions to make a few different creative things (a small catapult and a solar oven).

The genius of this book does not end there though. There are also many real world challenges where the book asks readers to try to solve a specific problem in their own creative way. It also highlights the importance of "flops" and making mistakes.

At 94 pages this definitely is a recommended purchase for any classroom trying to bring out the creativity in children. It not only encourages children to build and invent things, but it gives them a few different methods and tons of inspiration.

There are a few other books in this series, so perhaps look for the reviews of those in the near future.

TED Talk: Adam Grant - The Surprising Habits of Original Thinkers

A long time ago I downloaded the TED Talks app on my tablet but in all the years it's been on there, I've not actually used it. The other day I opened it up, which caused it to start giving me some suggestions. I've watched a few of them in the past few days and here's one I feel is worth sharing.

It's all about what Adam Grant terms Originals - that is creative thinkers. He tells a story of how he missed an investment opportunity that would have paid off immensely for him because he didn't recognize that the ones who offered it to him were going to be successful.

A big part of the talk is how (moderate) procrastination can lead on to more creative responses. he says (and it's backed by his research) that if you put of completing a task it gives you more time to think and more time to come up with more ingenious solutions or responses. I found this to be very empowering as I do tend to be a person who procrastinates (and in fact, this blog post is a semi-procrastination from working on one of my Coding Across the Curriculum videos), but I also tend to come up with creative solutions. It's nice to see the connection between the two. It's also nice to be able to support those children who (again, moderately) procrastinate with their work - to give them time to think and mull over ideas. 

A second idea that he discusses is the idea that original people are full of doubt and fears. What is different however, is that the doubt is not self-doubt, but idea-doubt. That is, that original and creative people doubt that ideas will work, but don't give up on solving any problems. Many people doubt themselves so much that they don't even put ideas forward. This is not what originals do. He discussed the fact that you can (almost) predict the creativity of a person based on the internet browser they use (I'll let you watch the video to find out more on that though). The argument with that is not that your browser makes you creative, but the way you choose which browser you'll use reveals a lot about your mindset (so just changing browsers does nothing, I'm sorry to say to you Internet Explorer and Safari users - whoops, I just ruined the surprise).

The final point that he makes is that creative and original people produce a lot - and that a lot of it isn't their greatest. Most people who have done great and amazing things have got their because they tried many, many things. It is through those attempts that eventually they have discovered new and original ways of doing things. This ties into the whole idea that failure and mistakes help you grow (also doing an online course where this is being stressed - more on that when it's done).

Here's the talk below. It's definitely worth 15 minutes of your time. If you are one of the people he is describing then this can be very empowering. If you are not, then it can give you some insight into how you can be like that AND how you can recognize those people who are. 

Organizing an ILE (Part 3)

One of the challenges (or opportunities) that exists when teaching and working in a large space with many learners and many educators is that sometimes the children don't get to know all the other children. In a massive group, surprisingly enough, the same children tend to work with each other when given the choice.

As learning coaches, when we saw this we weren't too sure that this was the best for our learners. We wanted them to develop social skills that would enable them to work with anyone. We also wanted our learners to be able to reflect on their work, with someone who was a safe friend (or even a critical friend).

So we came up with the idea of having learning buddies. The idea was that whenever we had the whole group of them together, they would be sitting with their buddy. If we asked them to discuss anything, it would be with this buddy. So we made a list, which we started rotating every week and thought it would go smoothly. I guess by now I should know that nothing every goes smoothly. Some of our learners were doing as we asked and trying to have conversations with the correct buddy. But others were bringing their buddy with them and sitting next to their friend and talking to their friend. There was a lot of frustration.

Our initial thought was to put a forced seating plan in place so that they couldn't sit by their buddy. But cooler heads prevailed and we took advantage of a day when half of the learners were out testing to run a mini design thinking workshop. We identified the problem to the learners and we examined why this particular response was occurring.

The overall theme to the responses was that they didn't know their buddy and that they were more comfortable with their friends. Some of the buddies were goofing off so they wanted to make sure they talked to someone. We identified that the main problem was that they didn't have enough time to get to know there buddies. So we framed our How Might We question as:

How might we get to know our learning buddies better so that we talk to them and not our friends? (it may not have been exactly this wording).

From there were had the children do a crazy eights activity to come up with some possible solutions. Each child picked their favourite and pitched it to a partner. Each pair chose their favourite in that group and then pitched it to another pair. This continued until we had two ideas facing off against each other.

To be honest, all of the ideas were pretty good, but I liked both of the final two the best. The first was to have the buddies interview each other and the second was to have the play a game together. We combined both and changed the turnover rate between buddies. So every two weeks when they got a new buddy, there was a list of questions to ask each other AND we gave them a task to complete with the buddy. Those tasks were things such as: make a secret handshake, make something out of 10 lego pieces or design a logo for you and your buddy.

Things went a lot more smoothly after this. I can't say whether or not that was due to the fact that we did some interventions or the fact that the children were actually heard and empathized with (which is a big part of a design thinking approach). Either way, as the term went on, we as learning coaches did notice some interesting interactions and a growing sense of community amongst the learners. This effort was only a small part of our larger efforts but the idea itself AND the trouble shooting we did with the learners clearly has had some impact on the way our habitat runs.

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.

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.

Stop Motion Movies

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!

Pen Pals: Connecting Across Oceans

This past term, after a few years of saying I will do it, I finally got some learners to write letters to children in another country AND sent the letters. Two things happened in June that made this possible, three months later: 1) I met some very willing partners at ISTE (hey, there is a theme going through a few of these posts, isn't there?) and 2) My team back in New Zealand also wanted to connect with other schools. Having the support on both sides proved crucial in getting this off the ground.

Part of the reason I wanted to do this was that all too often, writing is done for the sake of writing. I wanted to give my learners a chance to write for a purpose (in this case, communicating with someone and fostering a long-distance friendship, maybe), and to connect with children around the world.

So as a whole habitat, we did a lesson early in the term on writing letters and all of our children wrote a draft (albeit, none of them actually had set buddies at the time). I was able to work out through one of my ISTE connections 11 learners in the US (North Dakota to be exact) who could receive letters. So a week or so ago, I had my 11 learners write their good drafts, filled an envelope and sent them off. I've gotten word that they arrived (thank goodness my handwriting wasn't TOO bad!) and the responses will come back shortly. I'm pretty excited for that. Here are the letters that my learners have written:

One of the biggest difficulties in this whole thing was arranging buddies. Some of my fellow learning coaches had some schools to write to, and some of them fell through. I was only able to (currently) connect with one other classroom (though I am still in talks with some others at a school in North Carolina). I think though, that I'm going to continue to be persistent. I'm still looking for some buddies, so if anyone is looking for some pen pal buddies (anywhere in the world), leave a comment here or a DM on twitter and I'll get back to you!

International Dot Day

One of the connections that I made at ISTE 2017 was with the Global Collaboration Network and some of its members (thanks to a night of karaoke). A few weeks ago I was sent this tweet:

@Doctor_Harves @michaelteacher @mrnamvas @GruntledChalkie @edutinker join in this week & more. Global connection https://t.co/tsxyMcHn6D pic.twitter.com/s93rckXPet

— Amanda Rogers (@TheEdsaneT) September 9, 2017

I was interested in making some more global connections, so I clicked on the link. Having heard a lot about Flipgrid recently but not really being sure of what it was, I decided to give this one a go and changed up my reading plan last minute to read the book (by watching the video below) and having my learners respond to it.

To be honest, while I really liked the book and its message, I was a bit confused as to what my learners were meant to do. Being in New Zealand, we had started looking at this on Monday, which is Sunday in the US, so there had not yet been any entries to the flipgrid yet. So we bumbled about what we were doing for a few days. I had the children make a picture about how they would make their mark in the world. What was interesting was that even though I didn't really give them that great instructions, they all interpreted differently and had some really interesting things to say:

The actual use of Flipgrid was interesting. Essentially there was an online board setup where anyone could post videos (though many of the other videos had a lot of filters on them, which didn't really seem useful) and respond to the videos with videos of their own. My impression beforehand was that this was a tool for flipping a classroom, but obviously the potential of this is far beyond that. Some of my learners did receive some feedback from others and while it wasn't necessarily very deep, it was interesting to see them connect with others around the globe. I like this idea and perhaps I can use it with some upcoming projects I'm trying to plan with some schools overseas. It definitely has the potential to help learners connect with each other.

It is not a completely free resource (though it does have a free version), so I have to do some checking to see if I can get by with the free version, but certainly it is something worth checking out. Global Collaboration, on the other hand, is something I definitely recommend!