Lockdown Cooking with Y9's

 I have been teaching a y9 food class this year. With the help of the fabulous Mrs Heka, TIC Food Technology, I have been having fun in the kitchen with 3 lots of Year 9 classes over the year. With being on lockdown at the moment, I met my new Year 9 class rotation while we are all at home. I have been sending them theory work to do, kitchen hygiene, safety etc and then I saw that the wonderful Mrs Heka and Mrs Hamer were doing practical lessons with their Y7 - Y10 classes. I then felt sorry for my class that I wasn't giving them that option to have a go if they were able to.

Link to the Food Tech section on my class site

With the support of Mrs Heka, I have had the confidence to try doing practical from home with the Y9 class for the last two weeks. Last week we made pasta from scratch and a nice sauce to have with it. I had one student come on with his Mum. They were all ready to go with the ingredients. I had sent the class the ingredient list a week in advance. There was another two students in the meet, but they were spectating, cheer leading. 

This week, the topic was hot cakes. I had two spectators this week. The student who was planning on coming to cook was unable to make it. I decided to do the practical anyway as I had two students in watching and I recorded it. My chef from last week can then access the video if he wants to have a go. 

Making Hows To's to Learn

My Year 9 students are learning to use Tinkercad in order to 3D model their product design so we can 3D print them at the end of the project.
There are some key things they need to get the hang of in order to make more complex shapes in Tinkercad and one of those is using the workplanes.
They could use the lessons built in to Tinkercad and they could listen to me show them in the class, but I know they will have forgotten what I have said as soon as they move away from me.
With this in mind, I started a DVC "how to" site, and made a start putting some Tinkercad screen casts on it. Link here . Then I thought that the students could make their own how to's that they could refer to when they get stuck with their product design. This would embed the skills more firmly into their heads as they were breaking it down themselves rather than relying on mine.

Today we made our first one. I went through it with them to show them how to do each step, take a screen shot, put it onto a presentation and write an explanation.
Here is my example that I did with them.



I shared this with them so they could refer to it and had the inevitable question - "can we just copy and paste yours miss??" ... errr...no. So I explained to them that the whole point is for them to make the how to as it will make the skills stick in their heads!
Here are links to some of the student work on their blogs.
Fasi Kaharau Leilani
My sample blog post for them to refer to
Our next skill will be combining shapes to create more complex ones. Hopefully doing their own skills rewindables will enable them to create their product design with more confidence. We shall see.

Google Site set up 2018

This is my Google Site for Design and Visual Communication for 2018.
I have used new Google Sites to make it and the video focuses on the layout of where things are and how Visible Teaching and Learning and rewindable learning has been addressed.

• Overviews of whole courses
• Calendars with weekly tasks
• Deadlines
• Standard breakdowns
• Small tasks
• Drawn examples
• Screen casts

Link to Class Site

Rewind to Remind

After analysing the internal NCEA Design and Visual Communication results this year, I realised that the main problem for the "not achieved" results was not the quality of the student work but the fact that it is unfinished. I know there are lots of reasons for students not coming to school but the problem still remains for them to complete their work.
I thought I would start to try and address this in some way right from the start, during these 4 weeks of Jump Start. All of the new NCEA Level 1 class have joined the class Google Plus Community. I have made a new section in this community called "Rewind to Remind" and I have started putting videos of the lesson instruction sections of the lessons. I have got used to recording myself over the year due to being part of the 2017 Manaiakalanai Class OnAir team, so thought it would be no biggie to have the camera out all the time, and hook it up to record at the "instruction" parts of the lessons. These videos can be uploaded to YouTube and shared through to the class community with no editing required. The students can then look at these if they need to if thy can't remember the class instruction or if they were not there that day.

Link to Level 1 Community
Link to Rewind to Remind filter in the Community

I will keep this going for a while and then get some feedback from the students to see what they think about how helpful it is or isn't.

Making rewindable resources with the students

My mixed class of NCEA Level 2 and Level 3 students have been practicing their isometric sketching skills in preparation for drawing their design developments for their product designs.
To reinforce their learning, they have been making rewindable resources for them to refer back to if they forget what to do. This was quite a simple skill but I want them to get used to the idea of making these resources for skills as they learn them, so they have a bank of them to refer to. I also want them to get used to sharing them so they are looking at and referring to each others work.
To get all of the resources available in one place we are putting them onto a blog made specially for this. This blog was started during Jump Start last year, but this was the first time we have had chance to use it this year.

Click here to see the blog

What was good to see during this was the fact that the students were focusing on their isometric resources and not the skill itself, so they didn't realise how good their 3D drawing had got.

As part of this activity, we looked at each others work and analysed what they thought of it. This feedback was filled in on a Google Form.  I have also given the students access to the results of this analysis so they can see what others thought about their work. We had a chat about this, so they knew that it is about the work and not the person and not to take anything personally.

I have sent this Google Form to the students to find out what they thought of this activity and if it is useful enough to continue with.

Embedding New Learning ...

With my intermediate class this morning, we were learning how to use TinkerCad.
We went through a simple some simple skills that will take them through more complex tasks :-

• Workplanes
• Grouping shapes
• Using holes

These are the tasks we went through today ...


We made small skill videos with the iPads after this where the students could pick which element they wanted to highlight and record the screen and themselves talking. We then shared those videos in our class shared folder on Google Drive so the students can see each others videos and remind themselves of what was covered today.

This was a good way to get them to talk about what they had been doing during the session as it makes it clearer to them as they plan what they are going to say. Here are todays videos :-

Student made Rewindable Learning

When our Year 10 students started their Jump Start courses, I made them a new site especially for these 4 weeks. It is full of all the skills we will need through next year to take us into merit and excellence.
Part of this site is the Ako Ngātahi page, where I am talking about the students making their own digital learning objects (DLOs), that they can use to embed their own skill knowledge and teach others how to do something.

In our double period today, we made a start on this. We have had 2 and a half weeks of skills so far so the students had to choose which one they wanted to break down.
I eventually want them to use the drawing projector that I made so they can record themselves drawing and rendering. Today, we made step by steps on Google Slides.
I then made a new blog specially for this work so the students can upload their skills work over the year. This blog is going to be for all year levels.
There were 2 examples uploaded today, with more "in progress".
Link to this blog here
My hope for this work is that in the process of teaching someone else how to do something, the student's skills are cemented.

Jump Start

We are starting Jump Start for our Year 10 students in 2 weeks. This is where they stop being Year 10's and start on their NCEA courses. They have done their options and with the seniors having left for exams, the timetable changes to next year's.
I have decided to make a new site dedicated to jump start.

I am designing it to be full of work and exercises that will give them the skills to get through Level 1 Design and Visual Communication.

• Sketching and rendering are important drawing skills to take them through any of their design projects. 
• The research and analysis tabs are the two areas that are key to getting their achievement up into the merit and excellence levels.
• The Google Plus Community is our place where we work together and support each other.
• Ako Ngatahi is a new idea for next year.  I want the students to start making the how to's and rewindable learning elements, as well as me. How we present this is up for grabs at the moment - blog, site YouTube channel - I haven't quite decided. 

This site is a work in progress at the moment but if you want to take a look, here is the link. I've got another week to get it complete.

Rewindable learning in Action ...

I had one of my senior groups today. It is a mixed level class of NCEA Level 1 and 2.
Some of my Level 2 boys had done DVC last year at Level 1 and some hadn't.

I have put this "portfolio" section on the class Google site, as one of the tabs across the top.

On here, I have made a selection of screen casts that explain a few basic things to do with using their google site as a design portfolio. I did this so that they can remind themselves of how to do things when they forget so they don't feel embarrassed about asking how to do those things all the time. It includes things like embedding objects onto a site etc
Click the link here to check this out.

I showed the boys where this was today and left them to it while I helped the Level 1 group.
They followed the instructions and did the site organisation themselves without any more input about it from me today!! They had to either start a fresh site if they didn't have one or archive their Level 1 work on an existing site to one tab and make it ready for Level 2.

Apparently I sound different on screen cast, so they tell me......

Rewindable Learning ...

Our Year 10 students have started their NCEA Level 1 courses already, and in Design and Visual Communication, we have got straight into the first project and have started researching the work of a few different architects.

I went over in the lesson today what I wanted them to do and did the traditional, all round the front, showing them how. As usual, some got it straight away, some plodded and some still hadn't finished at the end.

I am going to be using our class Google Plus Community a lot more for "rewindable learning" opportunities.

The plan is to do this in a number of ways :-

• step by step screen shots
• screen casts
• videoed skills sessions using my new drawing board / camera set up. 

Here is a link to our DVC Level 1 community.

I have already added screencasts on the class site about setting up and using their online portfolios
Link here
I had also made a start at thinking in this direction earlier in the year with my Y10 group..
Example 1 step by step
Example 2 - using the drawing board to record skills

I decided today to make a screen shot step by step so they can have another go / complete what they started / remind themselves etc... as it is 2 days till I see them next. It is also good as there were a couple of students who missed the lesson today so they can keep uo with what we did today.

Here is today's rewind ....

I feel that this fits in very nicely with everything that I have been doing over the last two years in regards to blended learning and online MOOC style learning. It will give the students much more opportunities to try again in their own time and keep up.