One of the perks of being connected through various online groups is that people from all over the world share various opportunities. A few months ago, one of the opportunities that I came across was to be a guest presenter on a (live streaming) YouTube show: The Suite Talk with Kimberly Mattina. Due to various delays on both ends, it took a few months to sort out a time that worked (I am the farthest guest by a wide margin) but yesterday the stars aligned and I was able to make it.
Here's the video if you'd like to hear me talk about Digital Breakouts and how you can make them (plus a few hints to some breakouts I've made!).
I really enjoyed the experience and am definitely keen to do these types of things in the future (so keep an eye out for that!).
So far there have been 67 views on the video. It's not a HUGE amount, but it's still a pretty decent impact. I hope that some of the viewers got something out of it.
If you're interested in learning more about how G Suite can be used in the classroom, check out the other episodes in the series.
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.
I'm pretty sure that I've previously mentioned some offshoots of my Google Innovator Project, but I haven't yet talked about one of ones I've spent more time on than the others: my Maths Strategy Videos. I essentially have had this idea for a few years now, but have kind of sat on it for a while because of time and not really having the confidence or motivation. That all changed with making videos for breakouts and coding.
I've used videos before in my mathematics teaching but often it was hard to find ones that aligned with what I was meant to teach. I've also been taking an online course through Stanford University and Jo Boaler that's been encouraging me to make maths more visual.
When planning my videos I wanted to be able to show learners a variety of ways that they could visualize a problem or strategy. But I also wanted to make the videos short and sweet. Admittedly I do feel like an amateur, both with the quality of the videos but also the content.
I've tried to get lots of feedback (and I've gotten a bit from my immediate colleagues at Ormiston) but I still doubt that I'm showing the strategies the best way I could. At the end of the day though, it's another resource for children to use in order to understand mathematical concepts.
So why do I think this is a good idea? I've noticed that many children do not feel very confident in maths class. Their brains seem to shut off the moment you say "It's time for maths." For many children these are difficult and abstract concepts to understand and they are likely taught way to quickly. I wanted to give them a chance to review the lessons at their own pace. I also wanted to make it possible for me to do the work of 10 educators at the same time. All learners have different needs and this helps me meet them.
Ideally, I'll be able to cover all the different strategies in the NZ curriculum and beyond. In my future, utopic maths classroom, my learners would learn at their own pace, watching the videos and completing the work as fast or as slow as they could. I would act as a guide and facilitator - making sure they got the help they needed and that they were moving forward as they understood new concepts. This would go alongside collaborative, mixed-achievment problem solving, with (hopefully) rich mathematical discussions.
I've also started thinking of other ways I can flip the classroom. Watch for some writing videos coming soon...
Here is the link where I'll be housing all of the videos as I make them. I'll likely also have some sort of progressions where the videos can be linked to the curriculum.
Since I returned from Sydney in August, my work on my Innovator project has been somewhat uneven. I initially did a lot of planning but had lots of work at school to do. During the school holidays I got a good amount done, but have since slowed down. Still, I've managed to make some pretty good progress and follow some pretty interesting tangents to my project so I thought I would share my journey up to this point.
The Good News
I've managed to make two videos. To be honest I didn't think that I would be this far along at this point, so that's pretty good. Both videos were shot and edited during one week, so if given the time, I know that I can produce these at a fairly good rate.
I've also received mostly positive feedback from the educators that have used the videos, and many are looking for more. So that's also exciting. One of the bits of feedback I got was from Tim Bell, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Canterbury who has been significantly involved in both CS Unplugged and the creation of the new Digital Technologies Curriculum here in New Zealand. I had also previously attended one of his workshops in Christchurch (CS4PS) that has been instrumental in my understanding of computational thinking. So that was a pretty big deal for me. His advice was extremely helpful and will hopefully be seen in some upcoming videos.
I've also had a chance to try out one of my videos with my own learners, which was part of the reason for picking that idea. The early responses were very positive. The children were able to complete the task, with very little extra input from me, which made it much easier for me to manage another group (see some comments below about that). The idea of teaching this way is probably something that is going to increase more and more in the future. It frees up educators to do what educators do best: guide children. It allows children to learn at their own pace. Some people may say that getting a robot to do an educators job will not be as good, but I say that they've made educators do robots' jobs for so long it's about time we did what we can do to be more impactful. I'm not saying videos should be used exclusively, but if a child can learn from a video of me doing something, that allows me to teach a lot more children and frees me up to support them in other ways rather than just content delivery.
Another thing that has come out of this is that I'm learning a lot more skills for producing videos. There has been a quick learning curve and I imagine that as time goes by I'll have to learn more out of necessity. Already I have been looking at ways to improve sound quality and I want to work on video quality as well (I'm not so sure filming with an iPad is the best way to go, so we'll see).
Overall I'm extremely please with the progress so far.
The Bad Stuff
One of my biggest frustrations at the moment is time. There is just not enough of it to do everything I want to do AND have a life outside of school. For various reasons, most of my out of school time has been focused on non-school activities - which is the way it should be, to be honest. That means though, that I have been much slower at putting the videos out that I thought I could be after making the first two. My plan was actually to have three done before school had started this term because I was teaching both ideas and it would have allowed me to see how two different videos would work in a classroom setting. That being said, it's probably best not to pressure myself too much, as I've also managed to create some other things on the side, due to the skills I've learned making these videos.
The Interesting Tangents
At least two other projects have come out of this journey so far, and I'm planning a few more as well. The first one (which I've actually written about already) was the digital breakouts I've been making. The second, which may actually have the potential to be more impactful on education than either of the others is that I've started making a series of videos to show a variety of math strategies. It was a convergence of a lot of things all at the right time that got me started on this and when I shared the first 8 videos (they're a lot quicker to make) the response was more positive than any of the other resources. But these resources will be shared in more depth in a further blog post.
Other things that have been happening as a result of this is that I'm getting contacted by more and more outside agencies and people (which reminds me I need to get back to them). This is certainly an area that I'm looking towards developing as my focus is shifting from my own classroom to a larger scale (potentially global at this point).
Where to Next
For my project, my future plans are to continue to make the videos. My next one (which I've got the script half finished) will be on making stories with Scratch, while the fourth will shift gears a bit and focus on debugging (which has come out of some discussions with others about the new curriculum). Beyond that we'll see. Hopefully that can be completed before the end of the school year (December) and I can use the holidays to make a few more. Ideally this will be alongside more breakouts and maths videos.
I also want to start looking at Phase Two of the project: starting meetups for educators who want some support or who want to share. In the coming weeks I will put some feelers out through Twitter and Facebook to see who is interested and will hopefully be able to plan something for late January or February next year. I'm getting a bit excited about this as bringing more people on board might make this project take off a bit more.
I've got to remember that things start slowly. If I only have two videos it's not as useful as if I have a whole collection. Once things are made it will be a bit easier to have an impact, but like I mentioned above, it's all about finding the time.
I'm going to leave you with the two videos I've produced so far. Feel free to share them and use them as much as you'd like. I always appreciate feedback on what I've done so that I can improve what I'm making. Subscribing to the MakerEdNZ YouTube Channel would also be greatly appreciated and make sure you got emailed about new videos.
