Using Workspaces

 The school has been using Hapara workspaces for a few years now. Our DP in charge of curriculum has been pushing for all staff to have the work for the students to complete on a workspace so there is a consistent approach. Also, when you make the workspace public, you can embed it onto your class website so the planning and set work can be seen publicly.

To be completely honest, I was not the fastest convert to working this way. I already had all my work on my class site where my students made copies of the docs and I kept track via a spreadsheet. I made the workspaces as I had been asked to, put them on my site with some work on them, but didn't really engage after that. Bit of a "box tick", compliance thing.

Since going in and out of lockdowns over the last two and a half years and the students not having a lot of consistency, I decided to give it a better try. 

I am a definite convert now. As I already had all the resources on my class site, it did not take a lot of time to set up the cards on the workspaces for all the activities. Yes, it is putting the same stuff in two different places but this has proved to be a positive thing as it gives the students the ability to start the work from where ever they are accessing it. Blog post here.

I got some students voice last year about how they liked to be presented with the work. A lot of the things that I do came out - like making examples and making step. by steps / how to's - blog post here, so I wanted to make sure the students still had access to these things if the only place they were going to for the work when not in the classroom was the workspace. I have been putting my examples and step by step documents and how to videos all on the workspaces so they are easy to find. There is also a link to where everything is on the class site so they can see it there too. 

Another thing that I wanted to try this year was to use workspaces as the evidence "dump" for the drawn work that the students produce as well as the written work. I have only just started trying this, but it is going ok so I will be continuing this next year. The Year 13 student who has been trying this out for me has been taking here own pictures of the work so it hasn't created extra work for me really. I wrote a blog post about this thinking earlier this year.

Here are links to some of my workspaces embedded on my class site.

• Year 9 Food Tech
• Y11 DVC - Architect Information
• Y11 DVC Design Brief
• Y13 DVC Initiate Design Ideas - This was my first attempts at getting the students to put their drawn work on a workspace.
• Y13 DVC Product Design - This one includes blank templates to add design concepts that the students have drawn and photographed.

Here are a couple of examples of one students design and concepts and concept developments that they put onto the workspace (I have made copies of them so their names do not appear as the owner)

• Concepts
• Concept Development

This has definitely made it easier to have all of the work referenced in one place. This is really useful for marking and moderating. The original drawings will still need to be posted to Wellington for external marking. I actually agree with them seeing the originals to be honest as it is difficult to get a consistently clear image from scanning or photographing and you don't want to risk any details being lost.

I am a definite convert to this, but I still have to make my workspaces look pretty!!! - Blog post here

Moving from AS91627 to AS91630

 My Year 13 class have to put up with their standards for DVC looking bad for a while as we work on the external first - AS91627

This then feeds through to the product design standard - AS91630

To help with this, last week we had a talk about convergent and divergent thinking and designing. Link to information on the class site.

We also talked about Biomimicry, and how it is applied to design.

This has led onto working on their first design ideas. So far they have done observational drawings of their chosen starting points and looked at the design elements of form and pattern. This now needs to feed into their first thoughts. We have got half way through the design brief, so they have interviewed their client and have an idea of what they are going to be designing. They have also started thinking about the functional, social and physical elements.

I want them to start their first thoughts / concepts before they write the specification in the design brief. This is because we talked about designing in a convergent way and I feel the specification will hold them in too much. This was a hard point to get to as they have to draw ideas without focussing too hard on the outcome. They have to show the influence of their starting points / form / pattern but not have it just look like a copy.

My examples of where they are up to are on the workspace for AS91627

This is my example of what I wanted them to try for this next step.

Here are examples form some of the girls who have got to this step first. I am really pleased with how they have managed this activity as it is a hard one.

Prep for AS91627

 My Year 13 students are working on AS91627 - Initiate Design Ideas through Exploration

We are at the "exploration" part at the moment which basically means we are making a right mess. Having fun though.

I have been away from the class for 4 weeks this term, so we are not where we "should be", according to the original plan but while I was away they started theory work on the next standard so the time was still used well.

My planning for AS91627 is a combination of the class site, a workspace, one to one work with each student as they are all using different starting points and made examples taking them through what they need to do.

Here is the link to the class site - we are up to working on the design elements.

This planning is all put onto a workspace too so the students can use this to log the progress of their work. I have written a blog post about prepping the workspaces for drawn work - link here

I have put the same support and examples on both the class site and the workspace and links to each one, so wherever the students connect with the work, the help is there and links to where they can submit their work when done.

Here are some of the students doing press printing with EVA foam for the pattern section of the work.

This next step os to analyse where the pattern elements are - rotational, linear, translational etc (they are always surprised when these maths terms come up!!), photograph their compiled sheets and put the photographs onto the evidence documents in the workspace.

Using workspaces with Drawn Work

 As part of our hybrid teaching planning, I have been making sure my Workspaces are more supportive in how the students use them.

The main ones I have been working on and are being used at the moment are here ...

• Year 9 Food Tech
• Year 11 Architect Research
• Year 11 Design Brief - not complete, as of time of writing this
• Year 13 Product Design - not complete yet as they are mainly working on the external standard at the moment.

My Year 13 class are working on the external DVC standard first, which means lots of drawing on A3 pieces of paper and making plasticine and card models. I have seen how useful the workspaces are for the students to connect to the work they need to complete, either in the class or at home.

This blog post here explains how I have set up the class site, the workspaces and the calendar to try and get a smooth workflow.

I wanted to have a go at using workspaces for the students drawn work too. I have set up one for my Year 13 class to use and have used the same ideas I have on my other workspaces in terms of links to the class site and worked examples made by me. The evidence column is basically just blank presentations that the students can put photographs of their drawn work onto. What I haven't included on this one is the how to videos that I have made a big part of my other workspaces. 

This workspace is an experiment at the moment so I will no doubt be including some help videos as we go and I make changes in response to how the students find working with it.

This will also be useful as a record of the work as we have had issues with work going missing between home and school in the past which is gutting when it happens as so much effort goes into the work.

Link to workspace

Pretty Workspaces

I have been practicing using Hapara Workspaces with my intermediate students. I wrote a blog post about it here.
This week, I have been sat with Lenva getting a bit of PD as I hadn't done anything with the work that the students had submitted till I saw her. I was nervous of doing something daft and loosing the work. Lenva took me through the marking, the spreadsheet that is generated with all the marks on it and how you can send the work back in two ways - one to keep working on it and resubmit and one as the final return. I had been worried that I would loose the connection to the work once I sent it back as this was the main reason I was FINALLY getting my head round workspaces in the first place. Lenva put my mind at rest over that.

While I was with her, she showed me how you can search for other people's public workspaces. Very handy! She then showed me one that she had found that had been made very visually attractive by the use of headers and colour.
This reminded me of a PD Lenva did with us a while back and she gave us a presentation that she had put together of all the card colours put onto proportionally correct pages that can be downloaded as images and used as headers for your workspace cards.

Here is the blank presentation with the colours -

Here is my copy which is quite messy as it has the slides on it that I have copied and used to create header images for my workspace cards. So far I have been making the first workspace I will be needing with my seniors pretty. This is the jumpstart one which I will need in a couple of weeks time. Here is the link to the workspace. I think it makes it much more visually appealing and not just plain boxes with writing in them. Thanks Lenva. Here are the other workspaces I am fiddling with at the moment (as of writing, unfinished, just saying) Level 1 Chair Design Level 2 Lighting Design

First go with Workspace

Other teachers at the college have been using Workspace from Hapara for ages. I haven't. I have been to PD on how to use it. Forgotten the PD. Generally avoided the whole thing.
Recently, we got the message through that we could start to use workspace with our intermediate students. Now this made me perk my ears up as I have been keeping track of the intermediate work by them linking their documents onto a shared spreadsheet. This had positives and negatives, but the main negatives for me were the nagging to get them to link up their work and the fact that they could all fiddle about with each other's links on the spreadsheet. The idea of using Workspace to be able to have access to all their work in one place was a definite bonus for me.  (as Tech teachers at the college, we can't see the student work on Dashboard as they are not "our class's" )
Having a go with Workspace with the intermediate classes was a good plan for me in other ways too. It means I can practice with them before I try it with my college students next year ( a kind of no pressure, no judgement environment as we are all learning how to do it together ), and I can use it next year to keep track of my senior students work as this has been a major issue with me this year.

I have set up a Workspace for my Wednesday and Thursday intermediate classes and we had our first "play" this week. ( thank you to the teachers of these classes as they had to put the students into the groups on my workspace for me)

Link to workspace here

So far, we have filled in two templates from the workspace to see how to go through the process.

It went quite smoothly. The problems came from me not the students (no surprises there). They were calling "I have submitted!" and I was getting totally over excited to see the work come through on the activity summary tab.

I have embedded the workspace into the new class site I have started for next year and I have started putting together workspaces for the Year 11 and 12 students for the first projects that they do when they come back in the new year.

Next steps - sit with a member of staff who has been using workspaces for a while and bend their ears with the list of questions I have got after our first play this week, with assessment and marking being top of the list.

Learning... learning.

Hapara Workspace PD

Today we were very lucky to have Lenva take us through using the Hapara Workspace.
I had a go using the project my Year 12 students are working through at the moment.


Here is the workspace that I started putting together in the session today. As of typing this, it is unfinished. Link here

I also embedded this workspace onto my site so it is easily available for anyone who goes onto my class site.

Link here

To be honest, I feel at the moment that I am doing the presentation of resources and activities to the students twice as it is all on my site. "Double handling".

The good thing about the workspace is that I can track the activities a lot easier as the students have to submit via the application so it keeps it all in one space.

When I am planning new projects and activities, it will be via the workspace, so that will keep the "double handling" to a minimum, I think.