What does teaching look like now?

We have been back at school, doing onsite teaching for number of weeks now, post lockdown. Things have changed for me as a teacher. There are definitely some things that I am glad to see the back of and some things that I will be keeping on.

Hapara workspaces were an absolute marvel during lockdown. I had my work sorted onto workspaces for the first time this year as I was sick of loosing track as to where the students were up to and was going to give workspaces a really good try this year to help me with this. Blog post here. I was slow at our school coming to the workspaces party as other staff have been comfortably using them for a number of years and I have been happily picking their brains about the best way to do things. During lockdown, this became a totally different reality. It was no longer testing to see if it made things easier, it was full on “we are using this now” mode.  It was so good to be able to share work so easily with the students this way, it was all set up for those students who like the big picture and I could see students accessing and starting the work even if they weren’t coming online to talk to me during the Google Meets.
I will absolutely be keeping up with using workspaces with any new work that I plan in the future. I also really enjoy making them look pretty!

As some of my students were unable to come online and do work during lockdown, I have been spending a lot of time making help videos for my inquiry group to support them with their project work. Blog post here. When I asked them a few weeks ago if these help sections were of any use and how I could make them more useful.

"I don't really watch the videos but the examples are useful"

"I watched the first video. It was ok."

"They were useful. No they weren't too long. Yes I could understand what you were saying".

Not sparkling feedback, but not bad either. I have received more informal feedback since then. The Year 12 students are asking where their help page is like the Year 13 one. The Year 13 inquiry group are telling me they are up to where the help stops, am I making any more. This makes me think that this has been more helpful than I originally thought so I will definitely be expanding on this idea and try to include support like this in each project. It will be a fair amount of work to prepare but once it is there it will be really worth it. I have been drawing on my experience while doing Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher in 2015, where I looked at designing MOOC style courses. One of my main takeouts from that was short and sharp sections that were on task and to the point. Link to this work here.

Having the table top boxes of drawing equipment has been a yes and no from me. We had to do this when we first came back to keep the social distancing rules in place. Blog post 1 Blog post 2. I have kept them since going back to semi "normal" and I am not sure they are staying. I twitch every time I see how messy and mixed up they are and this is really not something worth getting grumpy over so they will probably not stay much longer. The tables are back in groups though. I absolutely HATED the rows.

Not sweating the small stuff. Hey. We are still in the middle of a huge global happening that doesn't make for great viewing if you watch the news so I am definitely still in the "don't sweat the small stuff" mode and am trying to make the class a good place to be with minimum nagging and maximum support.

What do I want from lockdown to stay? The MUTE BUTTON!!!!

Drawing Demonstrations While Engaging in Social Distancing

In my previous blog post, I explained how I have set my classroom up so it can be used safely during Level 2.

This is OK till I want to show them "stuff". Online stuff is easy as I can airplay to the HUGE TV I have in my classroom.  When I want to show them any drawing skills. I can connect up my webcam drawing board to the laptop and still send it over to the big TV so the students can see what I'm drawing. My usual method is to get the students round one desk and I show them drawing skills up close. We can't do this at the moment so my webcam is getting a good work out.

The other good thing about this method is the fact that I used Quicktime to show it through my laptop so I hit record while I did the demo. Easy peasy rewindable learning videos.

Back on Site - Level 2 Syle

I was SOOOOO excited this week. We were due back on site at school to teach. The week started with with an awesome staff meeting in the auditorium, where the chairs had been set up with enough space between them. We looked like a huge group of people who have been sent to the naughty chair!. It was so good to see everyone in the flesh.
We have a rolling start for our students. Y12 and Y13 in on Monday. Y11 on Tuesday, Y9 and Y10 on Wednesday then the whole school from Thursday onwards. It has been so good to see the senior students so far this week.
We have had to set our classrooms up in "exam style". Basically all separate desks with spaces between to ensure the correct social distancing. I wrote a blog post about the seating plans and drawing equipment boxes for the tables. 

Here it is in real life in the class. I had to put the tables on a diagonal as they were too close otherwise and I think I am going to have to swing the computer tables round so they are facing each other. Other than that though, it was an ok plan.

All staff were given a sanitation pack too so the students sanitise their hands as they come into the class and the tables etc get cleaned with the spray between classes. I don't think my tables have been this clean or been cleaned so often in their lives. We are a messy lot in my room.

As a warm up activity for my students to do so we didn't have to launch straight into our project work, they were all given paper and they got to play with the new drawing packs on the tables and get used to not moving round to get stuff like they are used to in my room.

Instructions (given out in stages with time in between) - 

Draw a square, 4 circles, a triangle, a squiggly line coming off from one circle .. etc ...etc...

Some of the instructions were about how they were feeling - draw a face on the cloud to show how you are feeling  - colour the cloud to show how you were feeling this morning - put some weather coming from the cloud to show how you feel about tomorrow.

These were interesting as they showed me the mixed feelings they had about coming back and how they are not looking forward to another couple of days of online teaching again till the whole school is back on Thursday.

I possibly am going to have to sew my sleeves into my pockets to keep me from hugging students. It is very hard. 

Preparation for being back in the class

I am very happy to be back at school next week in my classroom. To prepare for that I have been trying to work out my seating plans. I have big double sized tables so I'm thinking one student per end of table as they will be a metre apart then. The only problem is, I can't really picture how many of these I can fit in lines down my classroom. I normally have them in groups. I have done a roughish plan and put students names on desks ready but it might all be up for shuffling when I get in there on Monday and start moving the tables round only to find they don't fit the plan, especially on that right hand side. Never mind, I have online junior classes in the morning and don't see my in class seniors till the afternoon, so plenty of time for shuffling if needed.

I have also sorted out table boxes of equipment so the students don't have to get up and wander round for the stuff they need. When we are drawing normally, I have boxes of equipment in place in the room and the students move to get what they want when they need it. They can't do that at the moment so I have put together packs for each table. If they sharpen their pencils into the boxes, we will be having words!! I will include a paper cup to sharpen into.

Adding Extra Help for Students who can't get to Meets

I have been concerned about my senior students who can't get to online meets while we are on lockdown. I fully understand the various reasons for this (working being the main one), but I worry about how they will cope with being so far behind the students who have been coming to class when we get back to "normal".
My inquiry group are some of these students (my Y13 class) so I thought I would try something different.

I have added a page to the class site that is specifically for help with the individual aspects of the current project we are doing.
I have recorded myself talking about the different activities they have to complete and put up the example that I work through in the video for them to use as an example.

As of writing this blog post, I have only just started this so it is no where near complete. I have emailed the link to it to that class to get their feedback and to let them know it is there for them to refer to.

Link to page on class site.
Link to workspace - I have purposefully not put all of the activities on this workspace for this class yet as I have a couple of students who would try too much at once and they have enough to cope with. All of the activities are set up on the class site  and when we are ready, will be transferred to the workspace to aid tracking.

Teaching Online - Sketching

I wanted to do some drawing with my seniors. We have been working on Google docs etc for the whole time we have been on lockdown so we really need to get on with some drawn work. I have been doing some experiments on how to set this up - blog post here - and I decided to to use the webcam and paper and pencil.

Here is my set up for today.

I set up to do drawing with my Year 12 class P1 this morning where I want them to look at drawing design elements from their chosen design era. None of them turned up today (email conversations about the docs they are working on were going on through the session). I decided to run the session anyway and record it so it can be used to look back on and be rewindable,

There is not a lot of talking on this recording as I did not have any students in the online meet. There is more towards the end where I am describing what I have done. I looked at Arts and Crafts particularly as my most frequent visitor at Y12 chose this design era to look at.

For P2 I got three of my Year 13 boys come in and it was great to test the set up in a real situation to see how it went. This video is the lesson with the Y13 boys. Nothing really happens till about 5 minutes in when they start joining the class, just me scuffling about and then the drawing stuff starts about 9 minutes in. We focussed in on drawings skills today to warm us up as we haven't done any drawing in AGES. On the whole, the set up worked really well. The webcam has a few issues focussing sometimes but it is only a cheap one. I could try setting my camera up in a similar manner as it has the ability to be focussed. Sounds like an excuse to do more experiments!
As I said to the kids today. It was so good to hear the scratch of pencil on paper.

Using the Tinkercad Class Feature

I have used the Tinkercad class feature for the first time today. It's great. Really useful.
I have used Tinkercad a lot with my intermediate classes and to be honest, getting them to make their own accounts has always been a bit of a pain in the bum. As we are working / teaching / learning long distance from home at the moment, we didn't need this added stress so I thought I would give the class feature a go. Why didn't I try this before??

I put basic instructions of what to do on the class site and then realised that the Tinkercad class gives us a unique url to use to get tot he class. So that was even easier as I could put a button on the site for the students to click on. Then all they needed was the nickname in the class (Tinkercad just used their first names) and we are good to go.

There will end up being two buttons here after next week for two different classes, but this will be ok as they can only get in the class where their email is set up so it won't cause a problem.

It is easy to get to the classes that i have set up. It is just a button at the top of the page.

My two classes that I have set up so far are there. I have just tried it today with one. 

Then the really good thing is that i can see the work that have been doing on the dashboard, where I also have access to open the files too if I need to.

This is going to be a HUGE help over this working / learning / teaching from home period as I am planning on using 3d design with my Y9 and Y10 classes starting next week as we have new Technology rotation groups with our junior classes.

Thank you Tinkercad :D

Teaching from home - How can I do drawing support - Take 2

Yesterday, I wrote about some experiments I have been doing regarding trying to teach drawing from home (beyond recording my drawings, but doing it live, in a 'class") Blog post here.

After chats in the comment section, today's experiment was having one chat open and me being in it on the laptop so I can record the meet and in the iPad so I can show my iPad screen using Miro. I did it this way as I couldn't work out how to record the meet from my iPad.

As you can see from this video, it was terrible. Because I was logged into two devices on the same meet and they were close together, the feedback was huge and I had to mute both mics. This is no good if I am trying to explain something as I am doing it. The lag on the Miro board was just the same as yesterday when I was logged into the same Miro board twice instead of the same meet twice.

Teaching from home - How can I do drawing support?

We have been learning / teaching from home for a while now. Up to now, the Y11, 12 and 13 students have been doing the elements of the project work that can be done on Google docs / drawings / presentations etc. I have got all of this set up on the class website and Hapara workspaces (example here).
It is getting to a point though, that I need to start thinking about how to do drawings with the students so they can work on some design work at home. In the class, my method is to do the work alongside the students. I have examples ready before hand, I show them what to do in front of them and then continue with my demo pieces as they work so they can see the progress. How can i do this at home.

My first thought was along the same lines as when I made my own drawing board to connect to the class projector - blog post here. Unfortunately, I forgot to pick this up from my classroom on the last day I was in there. I have tried to make one at home using a webcam, a gorilla tripod and a science retort stand. This worked ok.




Recently, I have been using Miro (the free version) with one of my Y12 boys. We have been using it to collaborate on work to do with his design era project. (link to this board here). I was talking today with Ms David, one of our Mathematics teachers, and she said that she was using Miro too as a whiteboard for teaching maths. She got me thinking about how I could use it to do drawing via the Google Meets with my students.

Today's experiment was this.
The Miro board was up on my laptop and I had the app downloaded onto my iPad. I was logged into the same board on both devices.
I had a Google Meet running where I was presenting the tab where the Miro board was on the laptop. I was drawing on my iPad.


This seemed to work well. This is definitely an option to use if we are still on lockdown when the students get to doing some drawn design work.

Teacher Only Day - Teaching Strategies

Today was teacher only day for the whole country to help prepare for going into Lockdown Level 3 teaching tomorrow.
As part of the day, we had a department meeting session where we looked at the various teaching strategies that we have used during teaching online so far. We filled in a Google slide presentation where we all put our information to share. We then talked to it and received feedback from the rest of the department.

Here is a copy of that with just my slide in place and everyone else's removed (privacy)