Playing the BOOST Game with the Whole Staff

 During our last whole staff PLD session, the 5 CoL teachers presented where we are up to - blog post here

At the end of that session, we got the whole staff to play my BOOST game, which is based on inquiry teaching and planning. Blog post here about the BOOST game and where it is on the planning site is here.

After this PLD session, I sent a Google form around to staff to get some feedback about the game.

Were the instructions clear enough?

Yes

From what I could hear, yes. I also read the instructions on the screen. We also had them on a Laptop in front of us as well.

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Only when there is tie was not explained .

How did you feel about reading a scenario out in front of your group and then having to come up with a solution?

It was good having to think on the spot as most scenarios in the classroom happen on the spot as well.

Initially I felt nervous but once it was my turn, I was okay.

Interesting as we had some different and some similar ideas of how we would solve the problems.

I liked that the scenarios we could relate to.

Fine, it's very similar to the conversations that we have during the day

I was happy and the scenarios were true to class situations. The feedback encouraged collaboration.

Ok.

very useful

It challenged me to really think what I would do and some I as a teacher should do rather than giving excuses.

How did it feel to get feedback about your answer / idea from the rest of the group?

We didn't really give feedback this time as everyone had a clear strategy on how to handle the scenario.

It felt good getting feedback because what you do, someone else would do differently and you could use it for next time if the time arose.

Good

Felt great & encouraging

Yeah, fine - we were a pretty affirming bunch

Absolutely wonderful and uplifting. Much more, it showed that they were standing with me and saying, "we hear you, we are with you".

It was really good

very useful

It helped me to reflect and how I can improve . Helpful

Did you like giving feedback to others about their ideas on the scenarios?

We didn't really give feedback this time as everyone had a clear strategy on how to handle the scenario.

Yes, it reassures them that their solution is good and also the feedback was constructive

yes

Only sometimes

Yeah, it was fine.

Yes indeed , I did.

Yes

Yes

Yes definitely and a good way to exchange ideas to grow in this profession

How do you think the game could be improved?

Possibly give some scenarios that aren't as common, so we can learn how to handle them if needed (although we didn't get through too many cards, so maybe there were some in there).

More time given to verbally give instructions. Have the cards ready for players, as it what hard to figure out who needed what card from the pack. The scenarios could be a different colour from the rest, to stand out more.

Nothing at the moment

Great as is

Go cards-against-humanity style, where people have a certain number of cards to play, and the person who read the card has to match answers up with players.

Have written instruction explaining how to play the game and even add some point system to it.

?

good enough

I find it very interesting. I don’t think it needs improvement.

What was the best part about playing the game?

Hearing how other teachers would handle the different scenarios, as it gave me some ideas on how to approach similar interactions with students.

The support you give and get within the group about your scenario and solution. It gets those who usually don't speak, a chance to speak.

Listening to others solutions

sharing with other teachers and hearing what they do in the same situation.

Laughing with new people

Answering the question and giving feedback.

Sharing of ideas and listening to what others have to say

Learning about different opinions

Collaboration between the members .

Here are some of the staff playing the game

Planning Support - Card Game

 I have blogged about my planning support work with my 4 teacher trainee mentees before

Planning Support

Planning Support - Help Videos

Since then, I have started talking to them about Teaching as Inquiry and about how it should be an ongoing thing. I spoke about this to the whole staff during our last CoL presentation.

Staff PLD - CoL Presentation 2

Since then, my 4 mentees have been working extremely hard as they have a pile of deadlines coming up for university. This got me thinking about doing something fun when the deadline is over so I have tried to design a card game based on thinking about your planning.

I have put all of the resources for the game and the instructions on the planning site that I have made for them - link here

I am hoping that we get something out of this activity, being honest with what we think about planning and have a bit of fun while doing this.

The Game Cards

This presentation is set up to print 4 cards on A4 paper, back to back, so you have the card info on one side and the game logo and coloured background on the other side.

The Instructions

Planning Support - Help Videos

 I have written earlier in the year about being a mentor to 4 trainee teachers this year. Link to blog post here As part of that, I have been making some help videos to support them in the use of Google Sites and Hapara Workspaces. These are both requirements for teachers to use in their planning and presentation of work to students.

I have made two pages on the Planning Support website, where I have included links out to other sources of information and help and short help videos that I have made. I have kept the help videos short, so that a specific topic can be watched without looking through lots of other information and they can get that information quickly.

Link to Google Sites Help page

Link to Workspaces Help page

Planning Support

 This year, I am mentoring 4 students teachers and helping them with their planning. I meet with each of them each week and thought it would be a good idea to centralise everything that we talk about over the year.

A Google Site seemed like the ideal way of doing this so I have started putting together a site that covers everything that we talk about either individually or all together. This will be useful for when they forget what we talked about (there is so much for them to complete from the uni!!! ), so they can just look back at the site for reminders, support, templated etc.

Here is the link to the whole site

This was started in March 2023 so it will grow over the year to include more of the content we cover.

One day in the holidays..

It is Thursday of the first week of the holidays. Last week the students asked me if I was coming in to do classes in the holidays. To be honest, I laughed in their faces. 90% of them are not the most focussed bunnies during the normal lesson time and I live much further away from school than I used to, so the answer was quite a firm no.
I had a slight change of heart though, as I was planning on coming in to school on both Thursdays to do the Community coding course that has been running for the last 12 weeks. I told the students I would do classes on both Thursdays if they wanted. I'm too soft.

2 things came up as topics of conversation today. NZQA and penis drawings.

NZQA came up as a topic of conversation while I was helping the students put their work onto their portfolio websites.
I have been getting my students to put their project portfolios together using Google Sites for quite a while now. I have put a sheet on the front of their sketchbooks with a link to the student's site, so the drawings were still in the sketchbooks which are sent away in November and all they had to do was type in the link to the student websites to see all their notes and research.
Last year was the first year that I had made a bitly.com account so I could personalise the shortened url links to the websites.
This is when I realised that there was a problem. With an account on bit.ly, you can see how many clicks you get on the URLs that you make.

As you can see from this screenshot, there were no clicks on the links to last year's project portfolios.



This makes me REALLY MAD...... NZQA are all for "going digital" for the exams but can't get markers to click on links that are sent to them as evidence of project work?
Surely they have a computer in front of them to input marks as they are doing them so why can't they type in a VERY SIMPLE url to look at student's online work?
I went and had a chat with our SLT member who is the principals nominee. We decided that we would do a two pronged attack this year. The site and I am currently busy printing out the research that the students have done online to stick into their sketch books. I thought I was over doing this nonsense!
Here are the girls who were in today cutting out stuff to put in their sketch books that is quite happily sitting on a Google Site that no one at NZQA will see. Ridiculous.



What with this and the moderation debacle over the last couple of years, NZQA is becoming a swear word in my head.

The second topic of conversation came up as the students asked me if the examiners looked at all the blank pages in the sketchbooks. I confirmed this as they regularly come back with the "nzqa assessed" stamp on all the blank pages too. This is to make sure that they don't miss any work hiding in the middle of the book.
I have this conversation with the class at the start of the year when I give the sketch books out. I ask THE BOYS not to draw anything (like penises) on any of the blank pages, as it will give the examiner a bit of a shock! I say the boys, as I have taught in two countries now and it is always the boys who feel the uncontrollable urge to draw penises everywhere they go! I tell them I have scrap paper at the front of the room of they are feeling the need to draw them. It gives them a laugh at the start of the course.
The girls offered to go through the books to check them (to save me doing it this year). So armed with a roll of white sticky labels, they checked through all the pages in all the sketch books.
They only found a couple which is not too bad. They have been covered over with white labels.
 Teenage Boys!!

Trying Blogging with Jumpstart

In my senior Design and Visual Communication classes for the last few years we have been using Google sites as the place to put all of the project work as online design portfolios. Example here.
This year, during JumpStart, I thought that I would experiment with them using their blogs instead.
I am getting them to blog the tasks separately with a label on it that is the standard number. In this way all the work for the standard can be found all together by clicking the label.

	AS91057
Student 1	Link
Student 2	Link
Student 3	Link
Student 4	Link
Student 5	Link

We have just made a start on this so I will make a judgement about how it goes compared to using sites at the end of the project.

Lesson Preparation using the New Google Sites

I have made a start on my planning for Jump Start and next year, so I decided to bite the bullet and use the new Google Sites to do it.

I have decided to do a seperate site for each Year group then link them all together using a hub page site.
The one I have been working on the most to start with is the NCEA Level 1 site as this will be needed for Jump Start in week 5.

I have only got one project on here at the moment, the Architect Poster project, and areas for skills and literacy. If you look at this as i write this post, there are gaps as it definitely a work in progress.
Link to site

There are drop downs under each label, so lot of information is included on the site.
Under the home page is the Level 1 calendar and the standards that are on offer over the year.

Under the project tab, there are all the activities listed that the students have to complete for that project. Each activity has it's own page.

Under the skills tab, there are some skills that will be needed for this project. This will be added to over the year as the skills that they need increase.

Under the Literacy tab at the moment, are the activities that we are going to do over the Jump Start period of time at the end of the year. This area will be added to as well as the students need more literacy skills over the course.

Please take a look and any feedback on layout, design or content will be greatly appreciated.

New Google Sites

When the new Google sites came out, I had a little go and instantly hated it.
I mean, come on. I'm a Graphics teacher. I need to change fonts!!!

Anyway, as more staff at school are starting to make sites using the new sites, I have decided to force myself to love it as i am going to end up supporting people with something I haven't played with properly.

I decided to make my experimenting useful and so I have started off by making a Junior site. This will be used by Year 7, 8, 9 and 10.
I soon realised that the navigation across the top was not going to allow me to have one site for everything that I have at the moment on the old sites layout. Link here to my current site.

My layout decision was to make one site that has one page on it, illustrated above. This will have links to seperate sites for each level / link, with them all having the same look so you don't feel like you are swapping between sites all the time. I still want it to feel like one overall site for everything like I have now.
So far I have made and started on a skills site and a juniors site.

Link to hub front page
Link to juniors site
Link to skills site

What I don't like?
It's a really long list so lets focus on the positive....

What I like?
The look is clean and simple
It is REALLY easy to add stuff and use
How it flows beautifully for different sized screens and viewing

I am sure the like list will grow as I use it more and Google add functionality to it.
I shall continue to force myself to love it.

Getting NCEA classes organised at the start of the year...

It is always a bit full on at the start of a new year. students settling into new years, classes and courses. Getting the routines down so the rest of the year can be as smooth as possible.
Part of what we have been doing in Design and Visual Communication this week, is setting up the student's new sites to put all of their design work on.
What we have been doing this week is part of the way that I want to support students to be more self managing within a multi level NCEA class.
I made template sites for them this year. All the students know how to make a site now, so to save some time and give them a scaffold as to what to put in each project online, I made templates.

Here are the links to the templates :-

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3

I was a bit more free with the Level 3 template and not so descriptive of what goes where on purpose.

I like to keep all the links to the student's work all on one spreadsheet so I can keep on top of where they are in a project and an easy link to all of their work.

As well as this spreadsheet that makes it easier for me to see the whole picture, the students have individual tracking sheets for each project.

I put links to these on my over view too so I can easily see where the students think they are up to.
Here is where they are on the class site :-
Level 1  Level 2  Level 3
I hope that this helps the students have the confidence to realise when they have done everything and conversely, when there is still work to complete.

Visible Learning - A Tour Round my Class Site

Using site Templates for Design Porfolios

I have been using Google Sites with my students as their their design portfolios for a few years now. The first thing we do at the start of a new year is make our sites and go over the Google skills they need like embedding docs and images onto their site, making new pages for each project etc. As the time goes on that we have been working online, the students are needing less and less google "skills" time, as they know what they are doing better than I do.

Where I continue to struggle each year is keeping up with getting the work up onto their sites. We always seem to be doing it at the end of projects, in a mad rush, instead of it being a gradual process over the course of a project.
I was talking about this with my HOD and she was agreeing with me and explaining what she was thinking about for next year, which was making a site template for her students, with areas for each task that they have to complete, so the students know what to put on the site and in what order. I am always keen to steal / borrow / use good ideas so I immediately jumped on this one. This came about at this time as we were discussing the order of work on the student sites needing to show the flow through the project. We were going through Level 1 moderation at the time, so the random order that some students had presented their work was a talking point.

What I have come up with over the last couple of days is this template design.
It includes tabs for all the projects they will do over the year and on each page, there are headings for all the tasks that need to be completed within each project.
Link to the template

There are 2 planner / calendar items on the home page.

The year plan is so they can see an overview of the year at a glance.

The embedded calendar is for another experiment next year. Again, the idea came from my HOD. She puts links to the tasks she wants the students to do that day on the class calendar using a href attribute in the calendar notes.

<a href="http://www.w3schools.com">Visit W3Schools</a>

I thought this was a great idea this year, but resisted trying it as we never seem to be where the calendar says we should be in the project. So the plan is to only put lesson task links in the calendar a week in advance. This means that the usual year layout will look out of place in the calendar if it is not matching the lesson notes. This was the reason I have separated the year overview into a snapshot.

I have also included a link to the Level 1 Google Plus community on the front page so they can find it easily and there is a link to the class site. Links to my site / project examples are on each page too. 

All these help links can be removed before the sites are sent away to Wellington in November to be looked at for external assessment.

I considered putting in the blank worksheets / docs in place on the pages but decided not to as the students like to do things in different ways and I don't want them to feel like they have to do it the same way as me.

It is a balance between trying to save them time and being helpful, and doing too much and being controlling. 

Time to wind in my inner control freak....

Making Google How To's for my Students

If I am expecting my students to work more independently, away from me, on their project work, then I expect them to be confident with their "Google stuff" too.

I thought that maybe I could let them  use the How To site that I have been working on for staff for a year and a half now. This would be Ok if I linked to specific How To videos at key points in the process on their class site.


I decided not to do this in the end as I thought that the students would have more understanding if I linked the videos with what I was expecting them to do on their project sites.

So, the upshot of this has been a new section on my class site called Design Portfolio.
I have been trying to think of everything that the students might need to be reminded about when they are making their design portfolios and putting their work onto it. They can then refer to these videos when they are not in the class and need to be reminded about what to do.
I have also linked to the specific parts of this list that refer to activities within the project explanations on the class site. This is useful as I can then make one video for a skill and refer to it at multiple points within the site.

I can see this area growing to include drop downs for topics such as using Google Plus, and specific design apps that we use online.
I will do them as different pages for each different topic as the students do not like pages that are too long to navigate.

It's the Little Things ...

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time this term fussing over the navigation of my new site.

I want this to be right because :-

• Students want short sharp tasks, not long huge pages to drag through.
• Students need to find where they are easily within a project if they are working outside of the classroom.
• The site needed to be cleaner and not so "full" looking as it was confusing to find things with my last site as I had too much on show.

My old site was easy. It was all along the top with drop downs to projects.

This then led to project pages, where the whole project was on one page with a table of contents at the top, and links out on the page to other areas on the site or external sites.

This year, on the new site, I needed something different.

I am trialling a new way of working this year, where the students work through the tasks in their own time while we work on skills and collaborative activities in the lesson time. Later in the year, some students will also be doing the course totally in their own time as they do not come to the lesson at all. So, I needed a navigation system that was easy to follow for the students so they know exactly where they are.

When I trialled this last, it was one module, so the navigation down the side bar to the separate tasks worked quite well.

Seeing as I am putting the whole of Design and Visual Communication on the new site this year, this method will just not provide enough clarity for all the pages that will be involved. The example here is not even complete with all the pages. I really don't want all the pages on permanent show and the side bar takes up valuable page width.

I have gone back to the horizontal bar with the main areas on show all the time.

When you click on each of the project pages, there is a navigation at the top of each page that is basically just a single row table.

I have made my site a set width of 1000px, so I just have to know how many task pages there will be within the project, and make a table with one row and that many columns.

As I wanted to make this navigation bar stretch across the whole width of the page, I went into the html and changed the width of each of the table columns. (1000 / no of task pages ). This makes the cell size nice and even and fills the whole width.

I then just had to write the names of the pages in the cells and link them up to the project pages. I only had to do this once, as copy and paste worked really well for all the formatting and links, so the same navigation could be put at the top of each of the project pages.

This method is working well as the names and links can be changed for each project, so all the project pages can be "hidden" unless you are doing that project. This keeps the top navigation nice and tidy.

A small glitch at the start was that I had called the links task numbers ... task 1, task 2, etc... This is all good until the daft teacher can't remember what work she put in which task number. If I can't remember, then how can I expect the students to keep up? They are now labelled with titles.

A lot of fuss over a small thing? Yes, it is, but if I have got this right, then students can concentrate on the work and not spend half their time trying to find where they are. 

I want them to do this out of the classroom without me being there to point where things are.

I think I've finally cracked it....

Nice is not a design term!!!

My Level 1 DVC group were working on their analysis notes today. They have to include analysis of the work with all of their design developments and this is the hard part for them. We get around that by putting all the design developments up on the Level 1 Google Plus community (Link here),  and everyone makes comments on each other's design work. The rules are : - one positive comment and one supportive improvement comment. There is also the rule that "nice" is not a design description!!!
We have already had practice by analysing existing poster designs, and we talked about layout, colour, font choice, use of white space, focus of attention etc....
What we did then was start to take these comments and use them in their own work.
All of the students have Google sites for their project work. This will develop into a design portfolio over time.
They have their design developments saved out of Adobe Illustrator as image files and embedded onto their sites. We were then putting a table under each one, with columns for "what is good about this design" and "what can I  improve in this design". The comments from the community were used and reworded for this table.

Our next step is to make a plan for the final design based on what was said by everyone here.

The standard for this work is AS91069 Promote an organised body of design work to an audience using visual communication techniques.

To aim for excellence at this, the description is :-

Effectively promote an organised body of design work to an audience using visual communication techniques involves: 

• selecting and presenting the features of an organised body of work to an audience.

• purposefully selecting and applying techniques to ensure layout, composition and visual impact are appropriate to the context of the brief and audience.

• communicating a high quality presentation that is convincing, shows accuracy of layout, visual impact, and precise execution of techniques.

They are analysing the visual communication, layout and composition of the other members of the class. They are actually doing more analysing of work doing it this way as they have to write comments on all three developments of the whole class, but as they find it easier to analyse the work of others than their own, they don't seem to notice that they are doing a lot more of it!!

This year, I think i will get them to put a link to the Level 1 Google Plus community on their own sites, so the examiner / moderator can see the work that they do there too, even though that is not the part that gets marked in the end, it was part of the process.

4 credits before the end of term, here we come!!

Slowly slowly.....

My big plan of getting my whole Level 1 and Level 2 Design and Visual Communication courses up online as MOOC style / distance learning models is happening slowly.
The first module for Level 1 was easy enough as that was the standard I trialed last year so It was a simple case of copying and pasting from here to here with a few tweaks and adjustments here and there.

The fussy graphics teacher in me then came out as on the trial module I had the menu down the side of the site for easy access ...

This was ok for the trial one as the students only needed quick, easy access to the steps for the one
standard / project.
I now want to put all projects for Level 1 and Level 2 together on one site so I cant have this menu choice, as it would be too much to have down the side bar.

I have decided on a task bar across the top of the project pages that links to all the pages within that one project. This is a table with one row that goes across the top of each page. The task labels are linked to the appropriate pages. This table can change according to what project is being done as it is put in separately at the top of each page. The down side to this is that I have to manually put it in on each page, as it is not an automatic menu system like the side bar. The positives are that I can change and link them how I like and it does not take up page width.

I know this is a really nit picky thing to spend time fussing over but if I can nail down this layout from the beginning then I can concentrate on the important stuff...... like content.....

I have to keep reminding myself that I am designing a site that I want the students to access and follow while they are away from the class room. This means a really clear flow through the projects for them to understand, so if this then means me taking nearly a day fiddling about with different menu and navigation ideas, then that is a good use of time and thought.

Using Google Sites in DVC

We had some fun in the Level 1 and 2 class today making a visual and audio cartoon strip about using Google sites in the class.
This is part of some presentation work we are putting together for the research group, but we had a lot of fun acting it up for this one.


Here is the visual of the cartoon strip....

Here is the audio track that we recorded to go with it.....