This week some of us will be sharing our experiences from a recent two day Habits of Mind course we attended with James Anderson in Sydney. We will be sharing our big picture view of how we want to immerse both our teaching and our curriculum with The Habits and how we think The Habits will marry perfectly with the work of Carol Dwek and her views on Mindset. Carol Dwek’s research has informed much of our staff professional development in 2012.

Staff will leave this session with further reading to complete. This reading will form our discussion points for our next session which will be held in two weeks time.

There are many resources available to schools wanting to explore The Habits of Mind further, I have included just a few of them here.

James Anderson’s website Habits of Mind

The Thoughtful Teacher’s Toolkit

The Thinkers Tool Kit wiki

The article we will be reading this week

There are many tools available for teachers to create slide shows. To keep this session simple and manageable for all we focused on two of the easiest to use, Photopeach and Animoto.

Anyone can get a free Photopeach account and with a user friendly drag and drop interface anyone can create a simple slide show. The only disadvantage is that a free account has a restriction of 30 photos. I also personally dislike most of the music choices. One can though select no music, so that is what I usually do.

Animoto is more sophisticated than Photopeach and the results are better. In animoto one can include video snippets as well as photographs. A free teacher account is valid for six months and it includes the opportunity for student account too, which is a useful addition. Creating an animoto is again a simple drag and drop, user friendly interface. You must though make sure you sign up through animoto/education.

For more advice and help creating and embedding a photpeach see this post by Sue Waters at The Edublogger. For more idea about what other popular web tools that can be embeded in your class blog see this post from the edublogs help guide.

Having created a slide show, it is now time to embed it in your blog. This is a great help video with clear instructions on how to embed a video in a blog. The instructions are the same whether it is a slide show, an animoto or a video. The challenge now is to embed a slide show or video into your blog.

So this techie brekkie may seem repetitive to some, as once again it it on the merits of class blogging.

All grades at my primary school will run a class blog this year. Since we have staff who are new to this method of communication, we will be holding weekly techie brekkies this term, solely to assist staff to get off to a great start and to maintain quality blogs throughout the year.

Each week we will have focus questions, this week they are:

Why are we all going to blog this year?     How am I going to be supported to get started with class blogging?

Why are we blogging this year?

We discussed this question by reading and discussing several academic reports promoting the use of class blogs. Including
this report written by Zoe Fetritch. As well as several e:lit publications, from the Primary English Teaching Association. Having paper copies of these articles proved to be of great assistance in our round table discussion.

How will I be supported in my class blogging?

Many staff will need help not only starting a class blog but maintaining it, so they were assured that help is at hand.

Our immediate priority was to set up free edublogs class blogs, which most classes had done. I then handed out the bulk upgrade of edublog pro licenses I had already purchased. We discussed how to write their first posts.

I showed them the fabulous edublogs help guides including Using your dashboard and Writing your first post and I reminded them they could also print these guides as PDFs.

Next week we will consider photographs. Both the permissions needed when using student photograph as well as issues with upload size, creative commons and more.

Stay tuned!

As regular readers will know I am a strong advocate for the secure social networking site edmodo. I use it extensively in my classroom and now cannot imagine life as a primary school teacher without it.

I also blog with my students at year5rc and promote class blogs as a way of teaching authentic cyber-safety.

To aid with this workshop I have created this online magazine using a new program Themeefy.

Next consider the work of Dean Groom Head of Educational Development Design at Macquarie University. Dean is a passionate advocate for games based learning, especially the use of virtual worlds and the online game minecraft. If you have not yet heard of minecraft, check out this great infographic which clearly shows the rise in its popularity.

On his blog Dean writes You can’t have a so called ‘flipped classoom’ until you have performance before competence – and to do that, you need an entirely new way of working and assessing – which is exactly what you get with Xbox Live. Watching my own children design, make, play, problem solve and create within game worlds has convinced me of the value of gaming as a learning tool. Dean recommends educators interested in exploring games based learning start by reading his latest book. Virtual Worlds which he co-wrote with Judy O’Connell. Contained in the book are compelling arguments explaining why educators should be dipping their toes in virtual waters.

Why not learn while you listen? Start with this podcast Game And Learn: An Introduction to Educational Gaming

 from Ruben Puentedura, he argues that ‘video games can provide learners with rich worlds and complex narratives that both enhance and transform their educational experience‘. A description of each episodes content can be found here. This 14 part series including includes detailed links and researched backed evidence on the value of gaming.

One episode is a case study on the game Scratch. Scratch from MIT Harvard is a free download. It is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art – and share your creations on the web. The Scratch website includes student user cards, tutorials and videos on how best to use scratch in your classroom. Chris Betcher writes here on ways he has implemented scratch at his school, he also includes a video of student created scratch projects.

For research based evidence of the impact of games based learning read this blog Educational Games Research and this wiki Games in Education. To join an Australian community of learners join Game-based Learning Australia. Play and learn as you follow your curiosity and share your potential via learning games all over Australia. Game-based learning Australia is place for educators and learners to share their games, their discoveries and their achievements.

Other games worth exploring include sploder, atmosphir and kodu. Sploder is an online game creating tool in which participants can design, create, make and share free games. Check out this screencast video  for instruction on how to create a physics game in the style of angry birds. Atmosphir is another online game creator with educational possibilities. And from Microsoft comes kodu, which is probably best suited to upper primary. It too is a free download and the site includes video tutorials which will teach you everything you need to know.

Ben Jones who until recently, was a Professional Learning and Curriculum Support Project officer with the NSWDET argues in his blog that commercial gaming consoles could be the next learning opportunity for educators. He writes ‘It is no longer a question of when but the more important question of how will we use them for teaching and learning?‘ In particular he makes a compelling case for gaming consoles such as the xbox to be used within the PDHPE department.

Finally can I recommend you listen to this podcast from the edtech crew Games in Education. In which they interview Derek Robertson. Derek has been working with teachers across Scotland to explore and share just how the appropriate use of computer games can have a positive impact on teaching and learning and more recently, to encourage pupils to become creators – not just consumers – of games.

So you are interested and need to know what to do now? Follow this advice and guidance on how to implement a games based class. Or take part in this online research  called selene which aims to see if students will learn science better if it is packaged as a video game.

Alternatively for a refreshing view on how to ‘Gamify’ your classroom without using technology read this post from Mr Daley.

We started with this video by Aaron Sams in which he explains just how and why he flipped his classroom.

So just what is flipping the classroom? The term flipping refers to the increasingly popular practice of teachers creating videos, or podcasts of content so that students can watch and listen to their lessons for homework. Teachers follow this by using class-time for what previously, was done in homework. Such as tackling difficult problems, working in groups, researching, collaborating, and creating. What all educators agree on is though that flipping is only as good as the teacher delivering it. Read on, clicking the blue links for further information on flipping the classroom.

7 Stories From Educators About Teaching In The Flipped Classroom is a collection of   seven articles on the topic of flipping the classroom, which have been collated by K. Walsh. He writes, There is a wealth of experienced, constructive knowledge shared in this content. If you wish to learn about what the flipped classroom is and what it isn’t, or just better understand how teachers have used this new-age model, then read on. 

From Mind Shift:- How We Will Learn,a post by Shelley Wright called The Flip: Why I Love It, How I Use It Shelly discusses many of the issues around flipping, including many of the pros and cons.

She writes, The point of the flip is to capture more of the time when teacher and students are together for deeper learning. and The most important thing I do in my classroom is show students how to dig deep, solve problems, and reflect carefully on the constant stream of information that inundates us all.

From Josh Harnwell, the Assistant Head of Mathematics at Knox Grammar I have this slide share presentation. Josh raises the vital point about the need for parent as well as student education before commencing reverse instruction. Many of the students we teach have been used to being spoon fed content. Asking them to learn in new ways will be hard for some.

In the blog ‘User Generated Education: Education as it should be – passion-based’. Jackie Gerstein writes this post Flipped Classroom Full Picture: An Example Lesson .  She references Harvard Professor Chris Dede and his Global Education 2011 keynote in which is states: ‘I think that the flipped classroom is an interesting idea if you want to do learning that is largely based on presentation. You use presentation outside of the classroom. Then you do your understanding of the presentation and further steps from the presentation inside the classroom. I think it is a step forward. It is still, in my mind, the old person.  It’s still starting with presentational learning and then trying to sprinkle some learning-by-doing on top of it.  I am interested more in moving beyond the flipped classroom to learning by doing at the center than a kind of the intermediate step that still centers on largely on tacit assimilation’.

Teachers who are interested in flipping their classroom should join The Flipped Class Network Ning for a wealth of information including instructional videos.

And finally this research article ‘This research study provides new insight into how teachers use social networking sites, such as Twitter, as professional learning networks.

So you are ready to flip your classroom use camtasia and Smoothdraw3 to create your own video tutorials.

edublogs
edublogs/help

We also discussed the following issues:

What each blog will be called
Who will set up the new blogs
Who will write the permission for blogging letter that will need to go home to parents next year and what information it should contain
If we will allow the use of personal photographs in our blogs
Which years will allow student bloggers
How a student blog will be run and how a student can earn a blog.
Will our blogs be teacher or student centred

We modeled collaborative learning by creating notes during this techie brekkie using a previous set up google doc.

Finally we each viewed a different class blog from a list taken from here. We focused on blogs appropriate to each stage and we discussed positive aspects of that blog with our stage buddies.

I also reminded staff of the following articles on the benefits of blogging.

Jenny Luca’s post ‘Six reasons students should know about blogging’

Kathleen Morris’s post ‘Blogging with very young students’

Student teacher Zoe’s article ‘Blogging in the classroom’ which cites many research articles in support of blogging.

Finally I have added a link to Rachel Boyd’s video Why let our students blog? Since it was Rachel who inspired me to start holding Techie Brekkies in the first place, it seems appropriate to acknowledge her again as we come to the end of 2011.

Since we will be using Google extensively within our school next year, including Google apps for education. This session was designed to refresh our teachers’ knowledge on all things Google. Further resources and reading can be found at Googlefest – lesson 19 and Googlefest part two – lesson 20, which were lessons about using Google which we held last year.

We firstly went to Chris’s newest website Googlificationofeverything

Or using Google’s URL shortener

http://goo.gl/5tnyz

While looking at his site we also spent time on the following:

Working on a collaborative Google document together
Conducting Google searches using advanced features
Conducting image searches considering size, colour and attribution
We checked out Google shopping and Google blog

This was a good reminder of all the ways Google can help us in the classroom and school.

Image licensed under Creative Commons via http://www.flickr.com/photos/adriarichards/3285777403/

I firstly mentioned the keynote presentations I listened too.

Mark Pesce reminded us that technology is moving into the background with this excellent video

Ramona Pierson is the former CEO of Synaptic Mash and current Chief Science Officer for Promethean. She spoke about the future which is just around the corner for schools and students. ‘Dr Pierson said that school education had been largely static since the 1960s in that it remained largely book based. But she said that the pace of change was now such that “you won’t recognise education” ten years from now.’
More information can be found in an interesting article here.

Andrea Foggy-Paxton, a Program Officer at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spoke on her desire to improve student outcomes in the USA and introduced us to a new concept The School of One. A school where every child follows an individualised program every day. Using eight ways of learning, five of which are face to face.

I took part in a session on Diigo and Evernote run by John Pearce. We ran a session on Diigo and Delicious last year and I regularly use Delicious to bookmark websites. Diigo has extra features which could be useful especially for sharing websites within groups. A tutorial on this session can be found here. I am particularly interested in the idea of using Evernote to capture evidence of student learning, using my i-phone camera and folders for each student. I will be trialling this during term four.

I also took part in a fascinating session run by Adam Brice from Ringwood North Primary School on Challenge Based Learning. I really liked the whole school approach to problem solving using key words such as resilience. More information can be found here and with primary specific examples at Adam’s blog here.

A session given by Richard Lambert on using a whole school approach to content creation and online learning. We were challenged to think:

• ‘How do we encourage links between home and school?
• Is ICT still a subject in your school?
• Do you have a whole school policy that keeps parents in the loop as they often know know less that we think.

His presentation can be found here.

Again using Google Apps for education was mentioned. We have held a session about that previously which can be found here. A feature of google apps is the creation of a school domain which creates a protected environment for each school. Since all the student’s work is kept online, it does not matter what device is used to create it.

I was particularly interested in the ‘see revision changes’ feature of google docs. In which a teacher can view just how much editing a student has done in the document. A useful feature for upper primary students who often insist a document is finished and corrected even though it is full of mistakes. Thus checking the process and not just the product.

One of the most interesting sessions I took was given by Judy O’Connell called The Next big thing is Web 3.0. I have watched her slide show twice now. I really recommend you do so too, so as to try and get your head around the concept of semantic web, as it certainly has implications for us as educators. A growing  issue is that there is so much ‘stuff’ out on the web. It will be the semantic web that enables us to make meaning from all the content. In her presentation Judy also spoke about the  need for teachers to understand how a google search is fast but not necessarily accurate. She showed other search engines such as wolfram alpha and duckduckgo.

• Students recording poetry readings
• Students recording times tables
• Recording written work, such as autobiographies
• Creating running records for reading that can be listened to later
• Creating spoken stories for younger classes to listen to
• Recording spoken languages for playback
• Recording a listening task
• Recording a set of direction by a teacher for a student to follow

We also discussed why we should be encouraging students to use audio, so as to increase the diversity of teaching and learning styles and cater for our kinesthetic and aural learners was one point made. We then looked at the mechanics of recording in audacity.

To create an audio file in the classroom you need the following. Audio software such as Audacity (which is already installed on all our computers) and a microphone (all the net-books have inbuilt microphones). Once a student or teacher has recorded a sound clip they can easily be converted to MP3 files and stored on the network.

We also looked at the popular I-pod app audioboo. Audioboo allows anyone to record audio and upload it to a website in a format that is ready to embed almost immediately. All you need to do is to sign up to audioboo and create an account. Then follow these great instructions from Mitch Squires. Check out his blog to see how he uses audioboo in his classroom too. The great thing about an audioboo too, is that they can easily be embedded in your class blogs. Kevin Mulray also has fabulous instructions on using audacity in the classroom and they can be found here. http://www.mulryne.com/howto
Finally I showed them this great slideshare with instructions on exactly how to use audacity.