Finding your class details on CMIS

The start of the school year brings with it a new class and new lists to remember. As a teacher, all of the information you need to know about your new class is available to you if you know where to look.

Simply log in to the UWCSEA website and then go to the CMIS page. You will find the "Lists" link on the left hand side where you will be able to choose your class and download an Excel spreadsheet of your class.

Check out the quick tutorial video below to help.

Digital Bytes - September 21, 2015

This week's digital bytes includes articles about a free ebook on capturing digital stories, 11 quotes by famous writers and accompanying writing lessons, and using technology to help students read faster and with better comprehension.

A Response to Recent News Articles on the OECD Report "Students, Computers and Learning: Making The Connection"

Many people have seen news articles about a new report from the OECD in recent days. A typical article and headline is this one from the BBC - “Computers 'do not improve' pupil results, says OECD” This headline is followed by the opening line: “Investing heavily in school computers and classroom technology does not improve pupils' performance, says a global study from the OECD.”

Firstly, I would always advise caution when looking at news headlines. The purpose of a headline is by its nature to grab attention, not to necessarily give a balanced viewpoint. Counterpoint the BBC’s headline and opening line with the OECD’s from their own press release:

New approach needed to deliver on technology’s potential in schools

Schools have yet to take advantage of the potential of technology in the classroom to tackle the digital divide and give every student the skills they need in today’s connected world, according to the first OECD PISA assessment of digital skills.

The full report - titled “Students, Computers and Learning: Making The Connection” can be found here.

Digging in to the BBC article and the report itself, shows very clearly that the intent of the OECD report is not to advocate that schools do not use computers with students, it is rather that educators need to get better at using computers to yield improvements.

“School systems need to find more effective ways to integrate technology into teaching and learning  to provide educators with learning environments that support 21st century pedagogies and provide children with the 21st century skills they need to succeed in tomorrow’s world,” said Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director for Education and Skills. “Technology is the only way to dramatically expand access to knowledge. To deliver on the promises technology holds, countries need to invest more effectively and ensure that teachers are at the forefront of designing and implementing this change.” Quote from OECD press release

“....Mr Schleicher says the findings of the report should not be used as an "excuse" not to use technology, but as a spur to finding a more effective approach.” Quote from BBC article

This is a sentiment that the College very much subscribes to and one that we believe we are robustly implementing. The College, and more importantly our teachers, are very reflective in their use of technology to support teaching and learning and are constantly looking for uses that show real value add over traditional approaches.

Something that the article does not do is to question the method that the report uses to measure educational success. The measure of educational success used is the OECDs PISA tests. There are reasons why we might question this as a baseline.

The first one is the assumption that the purpose of using computers in schools is to improve academic results in traditional science, english and maths tests. Certainly at UWCSEA, we have never stated that the purpose of using technology to enrich teaching and learning is about improving test results. Rather the stated aims of the original iLearn initiative were to “...seek to improve learning and develop skills through:

• Flexible Progression
• Critical Thinking
• Unhindered Innovation
• Collaborative Learning”

For a complete overview of the original initiative please see here. Please note that these outcomes are now embedded into the UWCSEA Profile.

The PISA tests simply do not measure these skills and qualities, so they are not a valid measure for many of the desired outcomes that technology use can bring to teaching and learning. Nor do they test digital skills, which are in themselves a desirable outcome and for many a requirement for future preparedness in our students.

Further to this, there are many noted academics who question the value of the PISA tests even for their own stated aims. One of the most well known and a frequent guest speaker for the Singapore Ministry of Education, is the American Professor Yong Zhao; Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon.

"PISA, the OECD’s triennial international assessment of 15 year olds in math, reading, and science, has become one of the most destructive forces in education today. It creates illusory models of excellence, romanticizes misery, glorifies educational authoritarianism, and most serious, directs the world’s attention to the past instead of pointing to the future."

For more information you can read Zhao’s blogposts here.

So in summary, the College has found that much of the press coverage of the research has been misleading. We are fully supportive of the recommendations in the original report, although we feel they have limited relevance to our situation. For a full discussion of the report it is also necessary to question the use of the PISA tests as a measure of educational success, particularly as regards the success of “21st century pedagogies.”

Digital Bytes 28th September 2015

This week we have an article about how multimedia storytelling can change people's perception and develop empathy, a post on a hybrid model of assessment, blending analog and digital tools, and a response to the OECD article that made the rounds a couple of weeks ago. Enjoy!

Digital Bytes 7 September 2015

This week's Digital Bytes features a Chrome extension to remove distracting advertisements and related articles from online reading, a great Stop Motion activity for your students, and a blog post about the wonderful classroom designs on display at UWCSEA East.

Digital Bytes Sept. 14, 2015

We have a fantastic set of articles in this week's digital bytes. 

The first short yet extremely useful article is about using art to start student's reading. The second article is about new features in Google Drive and the third is about what digital storytelling is and isn't.

Google Docs updates: three things worth looking at

In addition to the new logo, Google has announced several updates on their blog. It's worth having a look at the whole list, but here are three things that you'll want to try right away.

Talk to your Doc:

Voice typing is integrated Docs in Chrome browser and allow the user to speak to type. This could be a big plus for students who are not yet proficient touch typers since they can now write at the speed in which they think. And, since it accepts upwards of 40 languages, it looks like it has potential for language learners.

Who's changed what?

Have you ever gone into a collaborative Google Doc and just wanted to know what's happened lately? Now you can click "See new changes" and scroll through a list of changes from most to least recent. Additions are highlighted and deletions appear as strikethroughs with the editor's name attached. 

You can always still see a revision history by clicking "See full history" in the top right or through the File menu. 

Data is beautiful:

Working in spreadsheets allows you to organize and analyze your data. But, what do you do when you're at a loss for the best way to represent your data? The new Explore feature in the bottom right corner of sheets suggests charts for you based on the kind of data you've entered. This is a great way to introduce you to new types of charts and up your data visualization game.

Honorable Mention:

Google Docs now has an updated templates in Docs, Sheets, and Slides!  

Digital Bytes August 31, 2015

This week's Digital Bytes includes a Google presentation about teaching photography to students, an article on the benefits of using your iPad as a document camera and an article about Reggio Inspired Mathematics.

Digital Bytes August 24, 2015

This week's digital bytes includes articles about using safari reader view to get rid of distractions on webpages, 14 essential search tips for students when using Google and teachers sharing their thoughts on how to develop student digital portfolios.

Which tool is right for the job? Presentation edition

I often get asked which presentation software is best.  Here's the definitive answer: it depends.

Of course it's best to drive nails with a hammer, but more than once, growing up on the farm, we'd grab whatever was at hand. It turns out that a rock, a crescent wrench, and Vice-grips can all get the job done but usually resulted in dented wood, smashed fingers, and bent nails. So it is with presentation software. The best thing to do is to know the strengths and limitations of the different options and then select the best tool for the job. 

For presentations, I use Keynote or Google Slides. The deciding factor on which to use usually comes down to whether or not I'm part of a group that requires asynchronous collaboration. I love the speed an fluidity with which I can make great looking slides, working with beautiful images in Keynote. But, if I have to collaborate with others who are building their own slides and we can't meet together to build one preso, Google Slides gets the nod. (Ideally, every presentation you give should be made in close collaboration so that the look of the slides is coherent - see this post by Keri-Lee for more tips on designing effective presentations) 

When it comes to presenting, I love the presenter view in Keynote and the fact that I can roam around the room, see my notes, and advance slides from my iPhone. (n.b. you can also see a presenter view from Google Slides) Though you can present your Google Slides offline, embedded video will not play. Another thing that often plagues people presenting from Google Slides is laggy performance, especially for video when the wifi is questionable. For this reason, I like to make sure that for an important presentation, I control my own destiny and don't have to rely on wifi... I like all my media stored locally on my Mac (not an option in Google Slides).
After the presentation, Google Slides are super easy to share with others. If I decide to share my Keynote slides, it means an extra step to convert to PDF and then share with my audience. I love the design features in Keynote so much that it's my go-to for basic graphic design work as well and with a little extra know-how, you can use it to create amazing interactives for multi-touch books and even html5 web content. Not to be outdone, Google Slides is a great way to make dynamic headers and content for our online learning platform.

So you see, it depends. Here's a summary of some of the strengths of each software:

A lot of this honestly comes down to my own personal comfort and preferences. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments... are there other advantages or disadvantages you are thinking of? Not to mention PowerPoint... how does that fit into the mix? My hope is that you'll carefully consider your choice of tools and use the one that best fits your needs.

Digital Bytes: Back to School

Welcome back to school!

We are kicking off our Digital Bytes with an article about Classroom Design that Promotes Student Thinking, iPad activities to get to know your students, and our in-house resources about Designing Effective Presentations.

Designing Effective Presentations

Every educator today needs to learn how to present effectively. But how much do they know about what makes an effective presentation?

Garr Reynolds, author of the popular book Presentation Zen Design, notes:

"For many of us, there is a hole in our education when it comes to visual communication... In the past, the tools for creating high-quality graphics and multimedia presentations belonged only to a select few. Today, those tools are in the hands of virtually anyone with a computer. However, possessing the hardware and software tools and knowing how to operate them does not a designer make." (p. 22, Presentation Zen Design). 

My colleague Dave and I are very passionate about Visual Literacy. We want to give educators the tools to develop their Visual Literacy skills, and presented recently to our fabulous Primary Leadership Team on Designing Effective Presentations.

Embedding the presentation here would not make sense. If you could understand the content of our presentation just by looking at the slides, then we would have failed in our job. There would be no point presenting if you could just read our slides! However, we did create some other resources which might be useful to share.

Handout

We wanted our audience engaged in our presentation. We didn't want them to feel they had to take copious notes as we spoke. We prepared this handout, because there were a few key things we wanted them to take away from the presentation, and we thought this 1-page handout could be posted at a desk to refer to when designing presentations later.



Finding Quality Images

Finding the right images to support the message you are sharing takes time - and is time well spent. This slide-doc takes you through how to find quality images. It is geared for teachers at our school, so bear that in mind as you look through.

Focus on the Audience

Really understanding what your audience needs and is hoping to gain from your presentation is important. We had participants in our workshop consider the needs of their audience using this handout we adapted from Nancy Duarte's fantastic resource Resonate.

Additional Resources

Some of our favourite resources for presentation design can be found here:

We hope you found these useful! Please let us know if you would like further information about designing effective presentations. 

Digital Bytes 15th June 2015

In the last Digital Bytes for the academic year, we feature:

- Why Wunderlist Works - an app to manage task lists collaboratively;
- The 10 Most Valued Work Skills in 2020; and
- Apps that help limit time on the iPad.

All the best for a wonderful end to the year.

Why Wunderlist Works

My colleague Dave and I work on many collaborative tasks. Our antiquated system for managing these tasks was a post-it note that Dave kept on his desk, that we would occasionally look at and cross things off.

Our MS/HS colleagues Adrienne and Jeff had been talking up using Wunderlist to stay on top of their To-Do List, so we thought we'd give it a go.

What we LOVE

1. Working across multiple platforms - I can access my Wunderlist on my iPhone or on my browser. There are a number of compatible platforms (including Android, Windows and Apple Watch) that let you check off your task list from whatever device you happen to be using. 
2. Multiple Lists - I have a grocery list with my husband, a DLC Task List with Dave, a list with my sister in NZ who is visiting soon and wanting to know what to bring. The ability to have multiple lists makes it easy to manage the different aspects of your life.
3. Adding Subtasks - There are many occasions when a big task needs to be broken down into multiple subtasks, and Wunderlist enables you to do this easily. Really handy to be able to feel like you're making progress on those huge jobs!
4. Assigning Tasks - Dave and I can assign our big tasks to each other, or leave them for both of us. It's nice to be able to see quickly what you are responsible. 
5. Reminders - Time based reminders can easily be synced with your calendar. We are using Sunrise on our phones to manage our Google Calendar, which works a treat.
6. Commenting and Notes - We can comment or write notes on tasks, clarifying new additions or reminding each other about things that are upcoming. Great feature. 
7. Attaching files - Adding a file, dropbox link or voice comment is another handy feature of Wunderlist. 

What we WANT

1. The ability to assign sub-tasks would be helpful.
2. Linking to a file in Google Drive (although we can add links in the Notes section).
3. The ability to undo the last action  - especially useful for accidentally checking off the wrong item! It can be retrieved with a few clicks, however undo or command + Z would be quicker.

Why not give it a go with your team?

Digital Bytes June 8th, 2015

This week's Digital Bytes has a number of great articles.

There are a set of great templates for Google Slides presentations that include icons that can be manipulated in terms of size and colour. 

Kick off your summer reading with 13 great Minecraft books for yourself and your students. 

Finally, there is a fantastic article by Kristin Zeimke about the importance of digital reading. 

Digital Bytes May 25, 2015

This week's Digital Bytes has the following articles: 21 Ways to use photography and images in your classroom, Top 6 sites for free videos, photos, and audio, and managing your computer's linked Google Drive folder.

Digital Bytes 18th May

In this week's Digital Bytes, we learn why "How much screen time?" is the wrong question, how coding can help us learn how to learn, and how playing video games for 10 minutes a day can improve maths scores.

Digital Bytes May 11, 2015

In this week's Digital Bytes, have a look at some videos that will help inspire you and your students, explore how to use Pinterest to support curating characters in your writing and check out Buffer, a tool to add text to an image for your tweets.

iMovie with G1 students

Filming the X for "Don't do this!"

Our Grade 1 students were involved in a service unit recently, and one group of students decided to take action by creating a movie about how to play safely in the playground. I was invited to be a mentor to them as they went about planning, filming and editing the movie.

Their teacher, Ms Dakkouri, allowed me some time to teach the whole class some of the basics of filming. We explored:

• Keeping the iPad steady
• Not filming into the light (or a silhouette effect would occur)
• Using different camera angles (such as worm's eye view and bird's eye view) to keep the video interesting.

Filming and acting in the playground.

Firstly, I met with the movie group to plan their message, where I acted as scribe. They had a list of dos and don'ts they wanted to communicate to their audience. We mapped out where we might film each scenario, and who would take the role of filming/acting/extras for each section.

Filming became our next priority. With the help of a Justand, the students were able to keep the iPad steady as they recorded. They loved shouting, "Action!" to indicate the start of filming. Several takes were needed in some instances to get just the right shot. 

Collaboratively editing

The students began putting the clips in iMovie, however soon realised they wanted to include a sign like a cross to appear on the clips for what not to do, and a tick for the clips showing what you should do. I had not planned on teaching the students about picture-in-picture, however it was exactly the tool they needed, so I showed them how.

Adding the tick using picture-in-picture

Collaboratively, the students took turns to put the clips in, add the picture-in-picture (with frequent "helpful" reminders to those who forgot how), and include a title. One student observed that it would be, "way cooler," if we could slow down the clip about the sand being thrown, so that provided another opportunity to show them how to do that. They were gobsmacked! It was wonderful to see them all so excited and engaged.

Finally we finished! They were thrilled to show their teacher, who promised to share the movie in assembly with the whole of the early years students.

What I liked most about this project was that it evolved out of a student inquiry, and that the concepts of film-making were taught as needed, for just-in-time learning. Students were receptive to teaching points because it was real world learning, and that's what has the most impact on understanding. I hope you enjoy watching our finished iMovie below!

G1NaD from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Digital Bytes 4th May 2015

Happy Star Wars Day! For this week's Digital Bytes, we feature Essentials for ePortfolios, an article from Scholastic on Twitter for Teachers, and 10 Techie Things to Try for those looking for a bit of inspiration. Enjoy!

 

Digital Bytes April 27 2015

In this week's Digital Bytes there are articles on a variety of assessment tools, the benefits of social media for kids and apps and websites to help create movies and animation. 

Digital Bytes 20 April 2015

This week's Digital Bytes is all about SHARING.

We are promoting our newest UWCSEA Twitter hashtag: #uwclearn, an interactive book designed to help educators get started on Twitter, called Twitter: A Cultural Guidebook, and the Diigo Group UWCSEA Teachers. Enjoy this week's offerings!

 

Digital Bytes April 13, 2015

This week's edition of Digital Bytes looks at ways that teachers and students can use iPads to support the learning of Geometry including a scavenger hunt and an activity that uses Explain Everything to allow students to guess the hidden shape. Hapara's Teacher Dashboard has a new look and there is a quick video to see how things have changed. Finally, there is a video by RSA Animate on the difference between empathy and sympathy.

 

Digital Bytes 23 March 2015

In this week's Digital Bytes, we introduce you to a great new site for finding Creative Commons licensed images with the attribution automatically included upon download - Photos For Class. There are also 3 new tutorials on our iBooks Author Vimeo album, where you can learn some fantastic new tricks. Finally, the iPad version of the successful Khan Academy website is packed full of features to explore, now more suited to include younger learners. Check 'em out!

 

Digital Bytes March 16, 2015

This week's Digital Bytes is loaded up with Google tools.

Within every YouTube account is Creator Studio which allows you to listen to and download free music that you can use for a variety of purposes. Have a look at Google Keep for note taking and keeping yourself or a group of students organised. Finally, if you type the word 'Timer' into a Google search box, you will get a timer which you can use to set time for a task.