Personal Goals 2020

Goal Number 1

Link to doc

 2020 Individual Goal 1 Worksheet (Maori Achievement)

Mindset label on my blog

By… (time frame)	By the end of term 3
I have/I am…  (present tense) (practice e.g. ‘ing’ verb)	I will have worked on mindset exercises with my Year 12 and Year 13 students
So that… (benefit/outcomes)	so that they feel more confident in themselves and their ability to complete the project work in Design and Visual Communication. Goal 1 Maori Achievement To raise Maori student achievement and cultural visibility.                                                                                                                                                                                              That 85% of Maori students will achieve NCEA Level 2.

SMART Goals	Reflection
Strategic -it should align with your overall position responsibilities and your organisation’s annual goals, not some randomly selected one.	This aligns with the school goal of raising Māori achievement and the school goal for student wellbeing.
Meaningful – if it doesn’t do anything for you, the goal should be re-written and should align to intrinsic motivation.	Working on mindset will help support every aspect of the work that the students do. It will help them have a more positive approach to their work as a whole, while my specific target will be their design work.
Aspirational – where might I see the goal leading me to in my practice that would really make an impact.	I want to start working with students much earlier with mindset activities and after the reading that I have been doing, try and get other teachers on board too so it is a more universal approach.
Risky – how about doing something that is complex, will require you to collaborate and get you outside your comfort zone – but in the understanding that it is the learning that is important, not the achievement of the goal.  Encourage and reward learning from mistakes.	This is not specific to DVC - my subject - so I am having to do a lot of research and reading. I want to collaborate more with other staff members. I have started this with the Health and PE department as they do this type of work as part of their courses.
Time-bound   -of course, every goal must have an end-point to keep you focused.  If the goal was not achieved, at least by aiming for something risky, you know a lot more about whatever it is that interested you in the first place.	I will get feedback from the students at the end of term 3 and compare it to the feedback from them earlier in the year.

GROWTH Model	Reflection
Goals - What do you need to achieve?	I want the students to be able to complete the work that they start in order to achieve the credits that are on offer.
Reality - What is happening now?	Far too many times, the not achieved in the results is because their work is incomplete. They avoid the things they find hard and leave them unfinished.
Options - What could you do?	I would like to improve how they feel about themselves and their work as they lack confidence.
Will - What will you do?	I will work on mindset throughout the year with activities and information.
Tactics - How and when will you do it?	I will research and read about the subject of mindset. I will collaborate with the Health and PE departments who already do some of this kind of work in their courses. I will include activities and information for the students throughout the year.
Habits - How will you sustain your success?	I want to start this kind of work with the students earlier - in Y9 and Y10 then definitely into Y11 so they have habits set up for when the work gets harder.

Goal Number 2

Link to doc

2020 Individual Goal 2 Worksheet (Other)

Literacy label on my blog 

By… (time frame)	By the end of the year
I have/I am…  (present tense) (practice e.g. ‘ing’ verb)	I will have developed and collated a series of literacy based templates that can be used by any of the students in Design and Visual Communication. These templates will rely heavily on SOLO Taxonomy structure.
So that… (benefit/outcomes)	so that these templates and ways of working become part of the normal flow of working through the design process.

SMART Goals	Reflection
Strategic -it should align with your overall position responsibilities and your organisation’s annual goals, not some randomly selected one.	This aligns with the Department goal for literacy and development of resources.
Meaningful – if it doesn’t do anything for you, the goal should be re-written and should align to intrinsic motivation.	This will give structure and support for all students doing the subject and enable more detailed writing in analysis work.
Aspirational – where might I see the goal leading me to in my practice that would really make an impact.	It is the analysis of their design work where Merit and Excellence results are so this work will give support to aim high in the students project work.
Risky – how about doing something that is complex, will require you to collaborate and get you outside your comfort zone – but in the understanding that it is the learning that is important, not the achievement of the goal.  Encourage and reward learning from mistakes.	There is a lot of learning, reading for me to do and collaborating with other teachers in order to achieve this goal.
Time-bound   -of course, every goal must have an end-point to keep you focused.  If the goal was not achieved, at least by aiming for something risky, you know a lot more about whatever it is that interested you in the first place.	The time scale is until the end of the year.

GROWTH Model	Reflection
Goals - What do you need to achieve?	To improve the students written ability when writing analysis notes with their design work.
Reality - What is happening now?	They produce notes that lack depth and understanding in what they have designed and also lack literacy structure.
Options - What could you do?	Research, read and collaborate with other teachers.
Will - What will you do?	Produce a range of resources that use SOLO as the main structure to support writing in DVC.
Tactics - How and when will you do it?	I will produce and collate resources onto the class site where they can be accessed by all the students and linked to during the project flow when needed.
Habits - How will you sustain your success?	Use and refer to them at all year levels.

Coding Matariki Stars with mBots

This week we have been celebrating Matariki and we have had lots of activities and competitions. Many of these activities involved the theme of stars so  decided to continue this theme with my Year 8 class this morning. We have been coding our mBots to move, make noises, make lights come on, react to sensors. Today, we were coding our mBots to move in a star pattern.
First of all, we drew stars on paper without taking our pencils off the page.
Then we looked at what we would need in mBlock to code the star. They already know the repeat block.
These were the blocks they needed to use. The tricky part was setting the variables to the correct values so the mBot will turn the correct amount on the points of the stars.

The students showed fabulous resilience today and went about the task of trial and error really happily.

We went out into the carpark about half way through. We drew big stars on the ground and walked the path so they could feel the actions that the mBot needed to take.

When they were testing the movement of the mBots in the class, we decided to tape a board marker pen to the front so it could draw on the table top. The students could then see the motion clearer and see what changes needed to be made.

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The students have been writing this up on their blogs and explain it much better than me.

Florence
Giovani
Karlos
Sakshi
Ellenora
Akuhata

AS91627 - Form Development - Prep for students

Planning for AS91627 - Producing drawings in 2D and 3D, looking at form sheet. .
We are looking to develop their work on form in a more abstract way, slowly moving towards product concepts. We need to have completed the design brief and the design elements sheets before starting this step.

Resources

Link to blog post planning - Pattern and Texture
Link to blog post planning - Form
Link to blog post planning - Colour and Shape
Link to class site

Link to help page on the class site - includes worked examples and screencasts of explanations

Learning Outcomes

• Look at their drawn work in different ways.
• Learn how to use a wider variety of media to create their work and rely less on the standard use of drawing pencil and coloured pencil.
• Create 2D and 3D drawings based on their form sheet.
• To be able to use the information from the design brief to guide them in their developments.

Materials and Equipment

Drawing pencils - only to be used in a support role, not as the main media for the work
Black outliner pens
White pencils
White paper, brown paper, coloured sugar papers


Form drawings and models in pencil and various media.
Look at these drawings as a base to find forms to use. If you are reminded of anything else as you work, then include images from that into your sheet.

Inquiry Question 5 - Hypothesis

1. Share your findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge. Make sure it is clear what evidence from your inquiry supports each finding.
2. Explain how some of the data you have used to build a profile of the students’ learning will be used as baseline data at the end of the year.

Learning Issue	Reflective Questions
The students start their project work and don’t finish it at all or to a standard that does not achieve at NCEA Level 3. Blog post here with analysis of results. The NA results are nearly all because the work is incomplete. The class is very mixed in terms of experience in DVC and in motivation.	What can I do to encourage my students to finish their design projects and achieve at NCEA Level 3 DVC? Can I teach the whole class to the same high level as the 4 potential scholarship students in the class? How can I support my students in feeling positive about what they can achieve?

If ... Then thoughts...

• If I let all of my class work at a higher level then they will be motivated to complete their work and achieve.
• If I focus on improving the mindset of the whole class, they will be able to think more positively about their ability to complete all of their work to a high standard.

Initial Data

Overall results analysis over time

Inquiry Group - Know your Learners - Statistics

Sharing the why

Preliminary findings

Mindset check in

Warm Up Activity - Back Drawing

Today my senior class did a short warm up activity to get them loosened up for the lesson. They got into pairs (and one three). One rested on the back of the other and drew on paper. The other had to lean on the wall with their paper and draw what they could feel being drawn on the paper on their back. This then evolved into writing messages to see if they could understand them. This then changed to larger groups trying to pass messages through a few of them like a drawn version of the  Chinese Whispers game.
It got them all laughing and warmed up at the start of the lesson where I wanted them to start drawing developments of their forms.

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Organising the Literacy on my Class Site

I have been having a shuffle about on my class site today and have started to put all of the literacy activities that I have made over time into one tab so they are easy to fond and access.

So far, there are three sections. Activities / Games, Literacy related to design analysis and SOLO structured activities.

A lot of these activities are included in the process of the projects as well as being seperated out in this section.

Here is the link to the Literacy page on my blog as it is at the moment

Mindset Check In

Today, I gave my students some sticky notes and they were asked to write their reactions to 5 statements.

Here are the statements that were put up on the board.

Statement 1

Your intelligence is a fixed thing

Statement 2

You can’t get any smarter

Statement 3

You can learn skills up to a certain level then stop

Statement 4

You can’t learn how to do everything - we are only good at
certain things

Statement 5

I can’t get any better at things I am no good at

Here are their responses. They wrote them onto the sticky notes and I typed them up as they wrote them.

"Educators who value the importance of providing challenging opportunities for students find that students react to the challenge in different ways. Some students have a “Bring it on!” approach and embrace the challenge with enthusiasm. These students realise that they may not be successful and might even fail at a task or two, but want to take the risk and stretch themselves. Other students feel threatened by the challenge, are afraid they will not succeed, and will often give up before they put much effort into it. It is imperative that teachers develop a climate in their classroom where failure is viewed as an expected and very important part of the learning process and students learn to reflect and redirect so that they can approach a challenging task in a new way or with more effort." 

(from "Mindsets in the Classroom: Building a Growth Mindset Learning Community" by Mary Cay Ricci)

The student responses were interesting. They started off with quite short answers and as we were getting to the last one they were getting more and more away from being totally positive in their mindset towards the statements. It is good to see a lot of positivity in their thoughts. There is room to work with them and try and get them to apply that positivity to their design work. That is where we come to our wall, when they are designing. I need to work through some strategies with them. Drawing is a skill. They all see that anyone can learn a skill and spend time to improve it. We need to work through strategies about the designing / thinking / analysis part as this is where we stick.

Mindset - Presentation from the HOD Physical Education

As part of our work on mindset, my inquiry group had a visit from the HOD Health and Physical Education today.  Mr Moyes brought over some of his art boards that he did when he was at school and talked about how he approached the work in a positive mindset.
It is good for the students to see people in different lights and to see different skill sets that they did not know about in people.



Mindsets in the Classroom: Building a Growth Mindset Learning Community
Mary Cay Ricci

Link to book details

"Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change, adapt, and “rewire” itself throughout our entire life."

"We need to step back, take a breath, and realise that it is not about how fast students master learning. It is about the perseverance and effort that they put forth and the strategies that they utilise."

In order for my students to develop and use a growth mindset, they have to see it in action in different situations.

Using Games for Critical Thinking and Mindset

I am currently reading "Mindsets in the Classroom: Building a Growth Mindset Learning Community" by Mary Cay Ricci.  Link to readings
Some of what she talks about is how she went into a classroom and did an experiment to try and increase and give them confidence in critical thinking and using a growth mindset. They got the students in the class to play non verbal reasoning games. This was to get the students to try and think in critical ways and for the teachers to see the students working and thinking in different ways.

"The addition of the games did something more than build the reasoning abilities of these students; the reasoning and problem-solving games contributed to a mindset shift in the teachers and, in some cases, the students as well. Many teachers reported that they saw potential in students that they would have never seen without the games. Some of the students who spoke little English flourished when the games came out. Some students who were functioning below grade level showed great strength in reasoning through playing these games. Teachers became more reflective about their own mindsets, viewed students differently, and raised expectations for many students." (from "Mindsets in the Classroom: Building a Growth Mindset Learning Community" by Mary Cay Ricci)

I wanted to try something like this to see if it would work in any way with my target group of students in my inquiry.

I had done a little of this last year - blog post here - so I decided that this same Towers of Hanoi game was a good place to start. I want to do this as my inquiry is about seeing if teaching the whole class in the same way as I am teaching my 4 scholarship students will improve the achievement of the whole class. This will involve the rest of the class feeling that they are able to do this level of work so I am wanting to do a lot of work with them about mindset.

Here is my collection of homemade games that we tried out today.

Here are my students having a go this afternoon when we had a lesson in the last period of the day. We worked in pairs today. One had to explain what to move where and the other had to follow instructions. They ended up helping each other. As you can see from the pics, we also got the big chess set out where there was also a lot of discussion and helping. It's all about the tatics.

Inquiry Question 6 - Readings

"Share three pieces of academic or professional reading and explain how they and other sources helped your form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning."

This is my academic reading.

I will be updating this list and the notes that go with it as the year progresses. The notes will be links to appropriate blog posts that relate to work done in response to the readings.

Link to presentation

Blog Posts
Using games for critical thinking and mindsetMindset Check In

Inquiry Question 4 - Preliminary Findings

"Begin to collect evidence and data and share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence"

I have some initial findings, basic data in the Inquiry Question 3 - Tools, Measure and Approaches - link to post here

Copy of information from that post is below.

Analysis of results from previous years

Internals

Externals

This is to try and give me an idea where the weaknesses are in my own planning.

Analysis and breakdowns of ethnicity, achievements in previous years, in both DVC and other courses, literacy and numeracy abilities.

Know your learners blog post here

This is to get a general overview of who I have in the class.

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I have some initial information from the mindset questionnaire that I asked my inquiry group to fill in.

The questionnaire is shown below here. I intend to use this information to compare against the same questionnaire at the end of term 3.

Here is the link to the results so far (9 responses out of a class of  15 - 2 of who have not returned to school yet after lockdown)

AS91627 - Design Elements - Student Work

My Year 13 class have been working on AS91627 in Design and Visual Communication.

Before the country went into Level 4 lockdown, we were well into the work. We have had training sessions with Pippa Lawler - blog post here and have been working our way through analysing our observational drawings through the lens of some of the design elements. 

My planning for this is here - Blog post - Lesson prep part 1 - Lesson prep part 2 - Lesson prep part 3

Now we are back to school, we have been working on a combination of the design brief for the product design project - link to workspace here or continuing on with the design elements work - link to class site. While we were on lockdown, I had started to put together examples and screen recordings of the design brief work so that students can get up to date when they are ready to. Link to help page on the class site here. This is an ongoing project for me, and this will expand over time as I make more "help" elements for the students to refer to.

The upshot of all of this is the students choosing what they want to focus on when they come into the class.

I have started putting together a presentation of the completed design element sheets as they complete them. This will be shared with the whole class so they can see each other's work.

This is no where near all of the students or all of their work (as of typing this post). I will keep it up to date as they complete this work.
I am hoping that seeing each other's work as they progress, it will inspire them to feel good about their own as they can see similarities in process in the work of others.

AS91627 - Colour and Shape - Prep for students

Planning for AS91627 - Producing drawings in 2D, looking at shapes from their observational drawings. Also looking at the colours used in the original source material.
Part 3 of looking at the design elements to develop their work in a more abstract way.


Link to blog post about part 1 of planning - Pattern and Texture
Link to blog post about part 2 of planning - Form
Link to class site



Learning Outcomes

• Look at their drawn work in different ways.
• Learn how to use a wider variety of media to create their work and rely less on the standard use of drawing pencil and coloured pencil.
• Create 2D drawings that are relevant to their starting point observational drawings that focus on the shapes that they can see.
• To be able to simplify from their observational drawings to just focus on the shape and not any details.
• To be able to analyse the colour combinations seen in their source material.

Materials and Equipment

Drawing pencils - only to be used in a support role, not as the main media for the work
Black outliner pens
White pencils
White paper, brown paper, coloured sugar papers

Paint

Brushes

Press print / EVA foam

Scissors

Printing ink

Observational drawings in pencil and various media.
Look at these drawings as a base to find shapes to use. Look at original source material for the colour references.

AS91627 - Form - Prep for students

Planning for AS91627 - Producing form in 3D and drawings in 3D from their observational drawings.
Part 2 of looking at the design elements to develop their work in a more abstract way.

Link to blog post about part 1 of planning - Pattern and Texture
Link to class site

Learning Outcomes

• Look at their drawn work in different ways.
• Learn how to use a wider variety of media to create their work and rely less on the standard use of drawing pencil and coloured pencil.
• Create forms that are relevant to their starting point observational drawings.
• To be able to simplify from their observational drawings to just focus on the form and not surface, details or colour.

Materials and Equipment

Drawing pencils - only to be used in a support role, not as the main media for the work
Black outliner pens

White pencils

White paper, brown paper, coloured sugar papers
Plasticine

Card
Scissors

Craft knives

Glue

Eva foam sheets

Found media (for example -flax leaves, cellophane sheet etc)

Observational drawings in pencil and various media.
Look at these drawings as a base to find forms to use.

Methods used :-

• Make the forms in 3D with plasticine. Focus on just the form with no surface texture or decoration or details.
• Use card to simplify the form in 3D - or part of the form.
• Photograph the 3D built elements and print out the photographs.
• Draw from the photographs using a variety of media and papers.

Watching James and the Giant Peach

I have a Year 10 tutor class this year. The big percentage of them are boys. We did have a slightly more even balance of boys and girls last year but with students leaving and joining the class it is now mostly boys.
We have been told recently that the research is all showing that there is a gap between the literacy of boys and girls. As their tutor, I don't have a lot of time with them a day (20 minutes) but I wanted to try something. I had started watching episode one of James and the Giant Peach which os being read by Taika Waititi and friends. We also had a conversation about this in our department meeting. I decided to show the readings during morning tutor times. the episodes are a good length each to match the time of tutor periods.
There was some interest from the boys then they drifted into watching their own things and chatting. Then I noticed something. They were "watching, not watching", except for one boy, M, who was totally engrossed.
The next morning, it was "oh, are we watching that again?", but they still did the "watching, not watching" trick. You know what Y10 boys are like. Too cool for school. They were sneaky watching, again except for M, who was openly loving it and didn't care who knew.
The third morning, we had a great video to watch that was from Samoan Language Week. M's reaction as he came in was "are we not watching James and the Giant Peach today?", quite upset about it. We watched the lovely school video then onto our book episode.
I have made an effort not to watch ahead. I told the boys that I love it as I remember very clearly my junior school teacher reading it to our class, along with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I wanted my first viewing of this to be with the boys as they were seeing it. I love it. I love their sneaky watching, not watching reactions, I love M's open loving it.
Also, it was still on the screen when my Y13 class came in so one of my boys in Y13 got it up on his device and spent the whole double period watching it.
Can schools just hire Taika to read loads of books. The boys love it!


This photo is from the first morning when we had just started. The boys were still coming in during tutor so they weren't all there yet.

Here is the link to Partners in Health, the reason why Taika Waititi is doing this.

Here is the link to episode 1 on YouTube, the rest of the episodes can be found from there. We are up to episode 3.

Inquiry Question 3 - Tools, Measures and Approaches

Question 3


"Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools."

Analysis of results from previous years

Internals

Externals

This is to try and give me an idea where the weaknesses are in my own planning.

Analysis and breakdowns of ethnicity, achievements in previous years, in both DVC and other courses, literacy and numeracy abilities.

Know your learners blog post here

This is to get a general overview of who I have in the class.

Mindset questionnaire

Link to form here

This is to assess where the students think they are at with how they think about themselves and their work.

Last year I did an activity with my group - What do they want from my course

Blog post here

I want to do this again as it gave me a really good insight as to why they were in DVC in Year 13 and what they wanted to get out of being there.

To support all of this, I have already had a session with my group about why we are doing what we are doing in DVC and why it is changing.

Blog post here

I did this to keep the students in the loop about what was happening in the course. This was especially important to those students who have been in Level 1 and Level 2 DVC wiuth me as they will notice the changes more than the others.

Online support

I had started putting together online support videos for my group during COVID19 lockdown, especially for those who couldn't come online for classes with me. I really like these and have decided to continue doing them for the rest of the course.

Blog post here.

This is to give the students support when I am unable to sit with them one to one. It is a very busy class (Year 12 and Year13) and they are all at different points in their work.

Breaking Down my Inquiry for 2020

This year, the focus for my inquiry is my Year 13 class. I will be looking at ways to improve the standard of achievement for the whole class by focussing the planning for the 4 potential scholarship students.

Here is the breakdown of how I plan to do this.

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