GAFE Day 2 - Afternoon sessions

This blog reflects the afternoon sessions I attended on Day 2 at GAFE.

Exploring Google Expeditions with Cardboard - Jim Sill

WOW!  First time really playing with cardboard and was great to get a free one - thanks Jim!
You will need to download the Expeditions app to your phone or iPad.  Virtual Reality is a chance to scale experimental learning.  This allows the teacher to bring the lesson to the learner.

The expeditions have some leading information and guiding questions (and answers) to assist the teacher in leading your journey.  The teacher can pause the journey.

You need to build a kit - you need devices (e.g. iPads, phones).  Ask for donations of old phones. You need a teacher device (e.g. iPad) and the device will push the image out to the learners.  You need to use a router (not connected to the internet) to share the images to your learners (as most schools block peer to peer sharing on their wi-fi networks).  Expeditions doesn't require the internet to work when we are running Expeditions.  Teacher is able to press and hold and direct learners to any part of the image.

Expeditions are able to be searched or you can browse different Expeditions on the first screen.

The teacher is able to use the experiences from the Expedition in the classroom to encourage rich discussions, great writing, extensive oral language and opportunities for further questions and explanations.

During the session we explored El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, USA; Observing the Gorilla in the Congo; 

Where to next? Google Teacher Certification - Kimberley Hall

Link to the Google for Education hub is here.

When doing the exams register for them using your personal gmail account as you are less likely to change your name than your school.

A few helpful hints for the Level 1 and 2 exams:

The exams are 3 hours long so you need to plan your time as once you start you can't pause.

The exam can take 24 hours to be sent to you after purchase to plan carefully.

Once you have purchased the exam, you have 7 days in which to complete it.

Recommendation:  Check out the review questions and exam sample questions first - it does help.

Improving understanding through 'creating'

Today, with the support or our team leader +Helen King our team of teachers became the "learner"!  As is often the case, through "doing", a greater appreciation of a task is understood.

Our task for today was to use Hyperstudio to create an animation - this is the task we are asking our learners to tackle this term.  While I have been using Hyperstudio since the beginning of the year, it was great to put my learning into action and take on board some tips and tricks to both assist with animating as well as shortcuts and different ways to attempt the task.

I'm the first to admit I'm not particularly talented when it comes to drawing - give me a computer or iPad and I feel confident in what I'm doing, but ask me to draw something and I definitely am nervous.  That said, in my classroom I am forever telling my learners "there is no such thing as can't" and that we need to "always try our best".  So with this mantra clearly ringing in my head, I begin tackling my Olympic Marathon runner (Hyperstudio animations this term for our team are of an Olympic athlete).

It is with some 'nervous apprehension' that I share my completed animation - there are definitely things that in hindsight I needed to draw differently or tweak to make more perfect, but time was against me.  IMPORTANTLY, I do take away many hints, tricks and tips that will enable me to support my learners - they will have the benefit of learning from some of the mistakes I made and I feel more confident in supporting them to create animations which have athletes with body parts that move (change) as they 'compete' on the Olympic stage.

Some of the ideas/tips that came from our session this afternoon I was aware of, but took away some great additional ideas:

• Use a scrap card to create equipment and your athlete - a scrap card is a blank stack(s), separate from your background where you can design these objects and the copy them into your background card
• Lasso parts of the athlete (eg legs, arms) and move them to a new position on the athlete to show movement 
• As you add to your Hyperstudio stack to create the animation, copy/paste the previous stack and leave the object(s) in place until you've put your new object in place - this allows you to line it up and see where the object was on the previous slide
• Make small movements from one stack to the next - the smaller the movement the more realistic it looks as you put the stacks together into a movie
• Don't use white on your objects - they will copy in and look "see through" 
• Try 'moving yourself' and think about where your arms/legs are in order to make your athlete look more realistic 
• Create your objects larger than needed - easier to draw them larger and then downsize them if needed - they tend to look more detailed this way too

Fun with Shapes

As my learners get more confident with using their iPads and the tools of Explain Everything, I try to introduce different ideas or ways of doing things to ensure they are constantly practicing and trying new things.  One such example last week was the use of shapes (identified during JAM testing as something we need to work on further for many learners) in creating images.   This idea came from the wonderful Ms George, relates directly to our term inquiry topic and many other Year 1 classes were also teaching this skill.

Aniqua

Using the Apple TV to model we talked as a whole class about the shapes we could use and how we could duplicate and manipulate these to create our images.  We started by drawing a giraffe and many of the learners were able to create some great shape images.

Aye Myat

The intention is to continue expanding on this during this week's independent reading activity by having learners create an image based on their reading book but incorporating the use of shape.  The scaffolded verbal instructions which I have been using this year will assist them with this.

Scaffolding individual learning ... using QR codes

Once again I've used QR codes as a way of learners having some choice in their learning.  Our team wide inquiry topic is "What animals need to survive?", which was supported by our trip to the zoo in week 3.

Using You Tube clips which are age appropriate for my learners, I've created an inquiry topic board and once again used QR codes so learners are able to have some choice about which animals they are exploring.

The first time I unpacked this as a class last week the learners were very excited.  We watched one clip (all clips are around 2 minutes long) and then had a rich discussion around what we had seen in the video clip and what they learnt.  Learners then had some time to go away and learn about animals of their choice.  Initially I buddied children together (mixed ability groupings) so that learners were able to discuss their animal with a critical friend and then bring the information they had learnt back to a whole class sharing session to round out the lesson.

In order to minimise the noise in the classroom, some learners were able to work outside.

Although I've used QR codes with my class throughout the year, this was to link to Tiny Tap activities I'd created and this was the first time they had some choice in the inquiry area.  The learners were extremely engaged and keen to explore and share.

I'm now being constantly asked when we can have another lesson with the QR Codes!  It's great that the learners are able to turn this enthusiasm into learning and I look forward to sharing some of that on my blog over the coming weeks!

Introducing more tools!

I often use our Inquiry time to introduce more of the Explain Everything tools to my learners as I can then use these tools in other curriculum areas.

Last week I introduced some of the features on the inspector menu to my learners - duplicate, copy and paste.  As part of our inquiry topic, "Trade and Enterprise" we are learning about NZ currency and identifying the different notes and coins.  After talking about each denomination each learner took a photo of one note (play money which looks like the real thing!) and we used this photo to duplicate.

During the second lesson I introduced the copy and paste concept.  It was interesting to see that by not copying a new note, learners were pasting the first note they copied.  We were able to discuss this as a whole class and they could understand the concept of making sure the note you were copying had a dotted line around it first, otherwise the first note you copied was the one that pasted onto the new slide.  As with any new skill, the learners will need to continually practice this skill over the coming days to ensure its embedded and I look forward to providing many ways for them to do this across all curriculum areas.

Its always great to see how excited the learners are when being introduced to new tools and how quickly they pick up new concepts.  The plan is to extend this duplicating to create patterns with the money later this week.  I will provide one slide with a photo of all the notes and coins and learners will be able to copy, paste and duplicate this to create patterns and manipulate the different currencies.  I hope this will also help learners to understand concepts such as 10 x 10c = $1.00.  

Capturing the Prior Knowledge

Last weekend I enjoyed the EduCampAKL unconference.  It was great to share some of the things I'd been doing but also network and get new ideas to use in the classroom.

One of these ideas was the use of Thinglink - a way of presenting many ideas in one space.  I'm able to Chromecast my laptop on the TV in my classroom so that learners can see their ideas are added and valued.

The first activity we did last week was to answer the question "How do I get the things I want?"  I took a photo of the class as they were sitting on the mat and then we added an idea to each learner (some learners had to leave for lessons outside of the class).

The next day we completed a new ThingLink and explored "Where does milk come from?"  It was really interesting to see what prior knowledge the learners had and this gave me a starting point with my teaching!  Importantly, the use of Thinglink means we're able to go back at the end of a unit and see how much progress we've made and what new knowledge we have!

I'm excited to see in how many other ways we can use this tool in the future!