High School eLearning

Fast Changing Web Trends – Student Snapshots

Published on 20 February, 2010 in Cool Tools, Google Apps, Google Docs, Students and Web Design. 5 Comments Tags: Forms, Google Apps, Google Docs, Trends, Web, Wordle.

Besides being a teacher of High School Mathematics and History (I only know of one other teacher in the country who also has this combination) I have also just started my second year of teaching Web Design & Development to Year 12 (16-17 year olds), a course that I developed last year.

On the first day of the course the students are asked to complete an online survey – a Google Form of course. The final question in the survey asks the students to “List 10 words which come to mind when the word Internet is mentioned”. This is an individual task where students cannot consult other students. I then display their results by copying/pasting their answers to Wordle to form a Word Cloud, in which the words that are entered multiple times display larger than others.

This exercise in itself creates good discussion among students, however this is the first year that I have been able to compare the results to the previous year. The results (below) created great discussion and highlighted to students how quickly new tools are adopted and sometimes at the expense of others.

Snapshot taken beginning February 2009 (26 students):

[click on image to enlarge]

Snapshot taken beginning February 2010 (54 students – 2 classes):

[click on image to enlarge]

Most telling Trends (for teenagers)

Facebook was a small player a year ago (smaller than bebo) but now is the most dominant (with bebo dropping)
Using the web to access Information is not as strong
YouTube whose 5th birthday is this week has grown further
Email has emerged more strongly – possibly because of the trend towards webmail and away from PC based software such as Outlook
Music has dropped significantly – can anyone suggest why this might be??
Porn (top right in 2009) fails to get a mention in 2010 – I don’t know what to make of that
Explorer (Internet Explorer) doesn’t rate a mention this year – probably because we rolled out Firefox 3 days earlier
Google is still the dominant player for internet searching, well at least in New Zealand anyway

I know that this was hardly a scientific survey, but it did stimulate some interesting discussion.

Google Forms (survey tool in Google Docs) and Wordle (word clouds) are a powerful combination of tools that could be used effectively across a range of subjects in a variety of ways. If anyone would like to contribute their experiences or ideas then do feel free to reply to this post.

Implementing Google Apps Education Edition – the experience so far

Published on 17 January, 2010 in Cloud Computing, Cool Tools, Google Apps and Google Docs. 7 Comments Tags: Google Apps, Google Docs, Moodle.

Well I am in the middle of my busiest time as a teacher and eLearning Director – believe it or not but I am supposed to be in the middle of the summer holidays. I haven’t posted since September last year with good reason. In Mid October 2009 our school made the decision to go ahead with my recommendation for a Google Apps Education Edition deployment. As you can see from previous posts a small number of staff used Google Docs effectively and were able to share those benefits with key decision-makers.

Preparations

With staff off on the 7 week summer holiday break around mid-December I felt the need to do the changeover before then so that they receive some training and use the Apps over the holidays. I set a target date of Monday 30th November with the migration of old email from Microsoft Exchange on the preceding weekend. Our IT Department did the initial set-up but we decided to contact a Google representative in New Zealand, Jan Zawadski of Cloudbreak, to assist with the migration to ensure its success. Although this was at a cost it was well worthwhile as we could use his experience from assisting business adoption of Enterprise Apps. It was also important that the change-over be relatively smooth for the 140 staff involved otherwise we could lose their goodwill.

Roll-out to Staff

First off an email was sent to staff 3 weeks ahead (9th November) informing them of the upcoming change and what it would mean. As you can see from the information sheet (Wellington College Gmail change) we introduced it as an EMAIL change as this is where staff would feel the most impact. Also, all teaching staff were told that they would be given the option of having Gmail running through Microsoft Outlook but not until mid February 2010 – it was important for them to try the Gmail interface fully before they opted back to what they were familiar with.

One of the recommendations from the our Google Rep was to set up a Google Help Site and to modify one of the templates available. As I had already used a Google Site with my rugby team I found this to be a relatively simple exercise - Wellington College Google Apps Support.

Gmail Training

With a successful migration over the weekend, I then ran several 45 minute Gmail training sessions throughout Monday 30th November and Tuesday 1st December for the staff. Here is what was covered [There is a Word Doc copy at bottom of page - feel free to download and modify the training session for yourself].

Feedback from the sessions was very positive with staff pleased with the extra functionality of Gmail. Some who already had personal Gmail accounts commented that they were not aware of all of the extras that they learnt about. One of the things that I promoted heavily was the ability for users to search for old emails using the power of Google search and the advanced search features – this was definitely a winner.

We had made the decision to allow all of the support staff (approximately 30) to run Gmail through the Microsoft Outlook interface. The biggest measure of success is that within 2 weeks all but one staff member (a power user of Outlook) had opted to stay with the Gmail web interface. Outstanding! Of course I was called on to help individuals one-on-one leading into Christmas. The biggest misunderstanding by staff about Gmail that I came across was the difference between folders and labels.

Calendar Training

A week later I followed up the Gmail training with Google Calendar Training. I had already discussed with school management the idea of separate Google Calendars for the school events. The first is for staff events which remains private, however it was decided to have 2 public calendars for school events:

Wellington College Public – is a calendar for parents, students, staff and the wider College community events
Wellington College Assessments – is a calendar which Heads of Departments agreed to put all internal and external assessment information for Senior classes. This means that parents and students can track when assessments are due and departments can see when there is a heavy workload on students.

Link to Calendar Training Session

Google Calendar was the tool that originally converted me to Google Applications back in August 2008. I can already see from staff reaction that Google Calendar is going to prove to be a powerful tool in the school.

14 Days until Student Roll-out

Well 1550 students return in 2 weeks time and will be pleasantly surprised to find that staff are confidently using Gmail and Google Calendar. They will also be given new network logins which will sync through to their new Gmail accounts. After some deliberation we decided to name student users in the format: “surname,first initial, first year,@ school domain” eg smithj07@wellington-college.school.nz – the purpose being that we can filter the students by year level or organise them by surname. One thing that we have discovered is that Google will need to improve the their Administration tools very soon to make it easier for administrators to run Apps institutions with a large number of users.

To encourage students and staff to use Google Docs I have been busy over the last few days creating a variety of useful templates. We will also be using Google Forms extensively throughout the school.

Finally, the College is launching a new Moodle Site concurrently with the Google Apps launch. I am also busy building and populating the site. This was another decision, made last October, to replace our old Microsoft SharePoint intranet (Now you can see why I haven’t posted for 4 months). The Moodle site is not ready yet but I will be writing a post about it in early February.

Well that’s all for now. I hope you get something out of this post.

Happy New Year
Mark

Fantastic Forms

Published on 15 September, 2009 in Cool Tools and Google Docs. 3 Comments Tags: Cool Tools, Feedback, Google Docs.

I have been meaning to write this post for some time now so here it is.

At the start of this school year (February for those in the Northern Hemisphere) I started introducing Google Forms (surveys) with my own classes and also to other teachers. For those not aware, Google Forms are a function of Google Docs. They are very simple to create – simplicity of use being one of Google’s principles. Information from submitted forms feeds into a Google Spreadsheet and results can also be viewed in a nice graphical summary view.

Here is a list of some of the ways that I have used Forms with my classes and activity groups:

Group Preferences – My History class were placed in groups for one of the topics. They gave me confidential feedback as to who in the class they felt most comfortable working with.
Intro to the Course Questionnaire – used to gather student knowledge at the beginning of a course
Word Association tasks – used to gather a range of words students associate with a topic – This example is from my Year 9 History class for words associated with “Ancient Rome”. The words were then pasted into Wordle.net to make a word cloud.
End of Topic Surveys – Great for gathering information on what type of activities the students thought were the most useful or enjoyable and of course etc.
Gathering Contact List Details – I used this to create contact lists for parents of my care group (Form Class), for the Rugby Team that I coached and of course emailing lists for my classes
Online Application Forms – The Tech Crew students who I help organise applied for membership via a Google Form
Class Vote – My Web Design class voted anonymously for the best website produced as part of an assignment [I won't give the link to this one as my students names are listed]
Team Vote – My Rugby Team voted anonymously for end of season prizes for Most Valuable Player, Most Consistent Player etc. [Again my players names are listed so I won't link for privacy reasons]
Group Member and Topic Preferences – My Year 9 History Class informed me of who they were working with in their groups and their preferred topics for research projects.

Here are some of the ways that Forms have been used school wide:

Professional Development Feedback – I have run a range of Teacher Professional Development workshops on Moodle and Google Docs.
School Survey – Members of our school community (students, teachers, parents) were invited to complete a survey on the qualities that they thought were important in a Wellington College (our school) learner.
Teacher Workshop Choices – on our last Professional Development day Teachers completed an emailed form to choose between a range of workshops
Scholarship Practice Examination Slots – Our Deputy Principal gathered choices of slots for optional practice exams (to be held this week and next). Some of the subjects were held at the same time whereas others were the students choices when to sit. All of this information was gathered and collated from well over 100 students. The Deputy Principal said that it saved him at least 10 hours of collation and chasing up students.
Sports Day Entries – Our Head of Sports just today asked me to design a form for approximately 500 students to choose events to compete in along with their DOB, Age Groups etc for next February’s Sports Day

I have created Links to some of the forms above to give you an idea of how I have designed them. Please do NOT complete or any of them submit. It is worth noting that you can turn the forms on and off depending on whether you wish to accept responses or not.

Other features are:

A choice of themes to make the forms more visually attractive
The forms can be emailed as a link or added to web pages by embedding or linking
One great feature is that you can add additional information into new columns in the spreadsheet without affecting later entries into the form
All entries are time/date-stamped so that you know when the information was submitted
Already mentioned are the great summary tools which automatically create useful graphs for quick analysis

If you have not used Google Forms then do give them a go. They are VERY SIMPLE. Just create a Google Account if you haven’t already and start using them….You won’t look back. They have saved many hours of time for myself and a growing number of our Teaching, Administration and Management staff.

Google Docs for Collaboration (Part 4)

Published on 28 August, 2009 in Cloud Computing, Google Docs, History and Students. 0 Comments Tags: collaboration, Google Docs.

Well its been 6 weeks since my last posting. I have been incredibly busy but have continued to use Google Docs for Collaborative work with my students. Here is another way that I have used Google Docs in the last few weeks.

Year 9 (13-14 Year Old) Research and Presentation – Ancient Rome

I decided recently that I have had enough of doing all of the work in preparing and teaching for me a new topic. I decided to get the students to do a 8-12 minute presentation to the class on a topic within Ancient Rome. They were to work in groups of 2 or 3 (their choice).

Choosing Groups and Topics – Google Form
First I listed a range of topics for the students to choose from or they could suggest their own. I gave them a link to a Google Form where they could put in their preferences for group members and topic preferences (3). This made it easy for me to collate & appoint topics to each. Here is a link to the Google Form the students filled out.

Planning & Research – Google (Document and Spreadsheet)
The students then worked in groups on developing Three Focus Questions for their topic. This was done in Moodle Forums to allow students to feedback to other groups. They then worked collaboratively on a Google Research Document which would become their presentation notes. I did the activity myself on the topic “Hadrian’s Wall” as I wanted to model to the students what was required. As I write some of the students have already presented while others are yet to. I used a Google Spreadsheet (collaborated to all students) to allow the students to choose time-slots for their presentations. This was another time-saver and worked really well as students raced to choose the best times.

Presentations – Google Presentation
The students, having done most of their research and planning, were now at the stage to develop their presentation slides to support their presentation notes. This of course was done in Google Presentation. Again, I modeled this for the students (link here) as I wanted them to see that the slides were visual (with no or limited writing) and used to support what was being presented (voice). This simple presentation technique is still overlooked by many presenters. Presentations with a combination of both a voice script and reading off slides have long been proven to be the least effective.

So far two groups have presented and the standard has been reasonably good and will no doubt get better as students evaluate those that went before them. I have three more in about 30 minutes time so got to go.

I hope that this use of Google Docs for Collaboration has been of some use.

Google Docs for Collaboration (Part 3)

Published on 12 July, 2009 in Google Docs and History. 2 Comments Tags: collaboration, Google Docs, History.

Well here we are again looking at ways that Google Docs can be used to help improve teaching and learning. My History class students recently wrote an essay in Google Docs which they shared to me as a Collaborator.

I was able to write directly into their essays with feedback (in teacher red of course). I gave them the obvious grammar and spelling corrections along with tips on how to improve their essay structure and writing. I was also able to link them to a model writing plan and essay for this particular answer. This exercise allowed for direct feedback to the students on their written work which, according to a major international study this year, is the key ingredient to effective teaching.

But the collaboration allowed for in Google Docs did not end there. Earlier in the year I had the students create a personal assessment record document from this published template. They collaborated this back to me which I keep in an assessment folder in Google Docs. The students were tasked with reading the feedback I had given them in their online essays and to summarise this in their personal assessment records. Next time they write an essay they will first read what they need to do to improve on their last effort.

Here are some examples of what the students wrote in their summary for their first essay. Students are Year 11 (age 15-16) and the essay was about the reactions to the Treaty of Versailles in the Origins of World War Two Topic:

Student 1: [Merit "B" Grade] – Good structure. Introduction is very good. Sometimes irrelevant, so need to work on cutting down information until only the key points remain. Don’t write the essay like a story, focus on the why as much as the who, what and how. The conclusion was too brief and rushed the end of the essay. It needs to sum up every aspect of the essay, rather than a general overview. The key to getting Excellence is to refine the essay.

Student 2: [Achieved "C" Grade] – Writing style is fine but need to work on content and focus on all the parties involved. I need to stick to my plan and not lose my focus on the question. I also must not give my opinion directly.

Student 3: [Achieved "C" Grade] – In my detail and content i was (waffeling) and much of my content wasnt relavant to what my essay was about. I did this quite alot in my essay and i will have to make sure i dont do it in future. I also should not have used ‘I’ and ‘me’ in my essay because it isnt about my opinion. My spelling also needs some work i shouldnt be in such a rush while writing.

How many times do we hand back marked work where students look at the grade and no further? At least the students have a permanent record of their essay, teacher feedback, a link to model essay, their own summary of where to improve and their grade.

Well, I hope this very practical use of Google Docs is of some use to you.

Google Docs for Collaboration (Part 2)

Published on 7 June, 2009 in Cloud Computing, Cool Tools and Google Docs. 2 Comments Tags: Cloud Computing, Google Docs.

This is the second in a sequence of posts outlining ways that I have used Google Docs with my classes.

Once my Year 11 History class had become very familiar with Docs I was able to give them a group presentation task. I mentioned in my previous post that I had split them into groups of three for collaborative note-building. Well these groups were named after the New Zealand Prime Ministers after World War II (1945-85). I thought it would be a good idea that each group introduced their Prime Minister to the rest of the class as a 5 minute presentation. Of course this was to be done chronologically as we moved through the course.

The groups were simply instructed to create and share a Google Presentation (PowerPoint) with each other and myself (for presentation purposes). It was to be a simple 4-5 slide presentation. They had not been given any advice in how to use the Google Docs tool as they were at a stage where they could work this out for themselves. There were to be 9 presentations in all.

As we progressed through the course and the presentations we were able to discuss “what makes a good presentation”. Some of the students really picked up on this and went for good visual slides complemented by some brief notes which they read as the slides showed.

I felt that this was a good use of the Google Docs tool as it was done collaboratively by the students and completely out of class and it also complemented what we were doing in class. The students took the task seriously and really came to the party. Note: There was NO ASSESSMENT involved in this at all.

I have published their presentations. Here are the links to give you an idea of what they produced:

Peter Fraser
Sidney Holland
Walter Nash
Keith Holyoake
Jack Marshall
Norman Kirk
Wallace Rowling
Rob Muldoon
David Lange

Plenty more to come on Google Docs for Collaboration…

Free online Image Editor – Pixlr

Published on 31 May, 2009 in Cloud Computing and Cool Tools. 3 Comments Tags: Cool Tools, image.

Recently I had a request from one of the school management team to show him how to resize (downsize) student photos to upload to our student management website. The photos that he had taken were far too large.

I decided that Photoshop would be too complicated to train him for such a simple task. I went to find Adobe Fireworks, a much simpler editor, on our school system and found that it had been removed in our last update.

I then dediced to search for a web based tool. It was then that I discovered a fantastic tool called Pixlr, an online image editor that is totally free and you don’t even have to create an account to use it.

Pixlr has an adobe photoshop/fireworks flash interface which allows you to either:

Upload an image from your computer
Upload an image directly from a website
Create a new image

It has a layers pallette, Navigator and History similar to photoshop.

The tools are simple to use and include select tools, a good range of filters and even a clone stamp.

This screenshot below gives an idea as to the familiar adobe tools and Pallette look.

Google Docs for Collaboration (Part 1)

Published on 26 April, 2009 in Cloud Computing, Cool Tools, Google Docs and History. 2 Comments Tags: blended learning, cool apps, Google Docs, History, learning.

This is the first of a sequence of posts that I am going to make about how I am using Google Docs with my classes. We often hear about how wonderful web-based tools are for collaboration and learning in theory, but not so often in practice.

I am fairly new to Google Apps having been convinced by other 2008 eLearning Fellows to give it a try. I just looked at my oldest document and Gmail and they date back to Beginning September 2008 so 8 months experience is what I am giving.

First, I must say that I have become a huge fan of Google Apps, and Google Docs in particular. Here are a few examples of their use with my Year 11 History class:

The students all have their own Google Accounts (our school has a planned shift to Education Edition in the future). With the students quite new to Docs I started them off with a simple task of notes building, to help them become familiar with the environment.

TASK ONE: As the students worked through their online course I provided them with a brief set of notes published online (yes you can publish a document as a web page) which they could copy and paste into their own set of notes. These publish notes were formatted with Headers 1 and 2 – this is important as the students could create an easy table of contents using this formatting.

The requirements that they were given were simple: Go online and find relevant images to embed into their notes. They were studying “The Origins of World War II” topic. With the collaboration facility in Docs I got the students to share their notes document to me as a collaborator. This meant that I could monitor their progress and give them assistance, if needed, and feedback.

One of the students has published his final product. Follow this link to view.

The next History topic (just started) has led to an increase in collaboration between students and the difficulty level of the task.

TASK TWO: Students have now been placed in groups of three (in my view this is an ideal number for online tasks such as this – they can be help more to account by others in the group for their contribution, or lack of). The students were tasked with writing a new set of notes on the new topic which is “New Zealand’s post WW2 Search for Security”. They are given suggested headings and a theme for them to write their content – example here. Students have only just started on this topic/task – it will be interesting to see how they progress.

I will post more on my experiences with Google Docs over the coming month. I can only recommend that you give it a go…..Good Luck!

Tech Crew makes an impact

Published on 8 March, 2009 in Students. 4 Comments Tags: Moodle, Tech Crew, Training.

Our High School, Wellington College, has been using a model of student involvement in ICT. This has grown out of the School’s principle of actively engaging senior students in all areas of leadership.

The Tech Crew program, started in 2006, was based on a model that our sister school, Wellington Girls College, had initiated. A handful of tech savvy students were assigned to a group of teachers to assist and train them in the use of various software, hardware, web and any other teacher related ICT’s. This proved successful in that the students, as trainers, started to feel ownership of their school’s infrastructure as well as developing the skills to mentor. Teachers were very comfortable learning from students in the know.

This year the Tech Crew program has evolved into something more substantial. Our College has just completed a 3 year Ministry of Education funded ICT Professional Development cluster. Over the three years most staff have become more ICT literate, however we desperately need to be utilising the constantly evolving web-enabled tools which have fantastic potential to help improve teacher pedagogy and student learning.

This year the Tech Crew are working closely with me to help develop and enable these tools for learning in the College. The Tech Crew consists of 14 students most of which are seniors though some juniors are involved to ensure the program is sustained. These students have a wide range of skills which are targeted towards the various projects. Some examples are:

Moodle Learning Management System – Our school does not yet have an official site. One of our Tech Crew members has hosted our development site on his server (based overseas). He handles the technical side while I manage the administration. Our Moodle site (rightclicklearning.co.nz) has managed to enrol over 400 students (1/4 of school) in courses in the first month. This success will see the school introduce an official school site for 2010.
Library Help Desk – One of our Tech Crew has organised the equipping of a help desk in our centrally located and well utilised Library. They manage it at lunchtimes and also assist with the management of Library computers. As further web-based tools are introduced into the school, the Tech Crew will be called on to assist further. This help desk gives visibility and easier access to students and staff for help if needed.
Online Booking System – One of our very talented Tech Crew members has been tasked by me to write a program for teachers to book computer and other College facilities over the web. It is nearly complete and will be launched in just over a week.
Online Help Desk – Three of the Tech Crew are developing a Moodle Course which will act as an online request and technical training site for teaching staff. This site will serve dual purposes. It will encourage teachers who have not used Moodle to experience its usefulness from a ’student’ perspective. It will also be a central point for help requests. Teachers will be able to request “Rapid Help” from the Tech Crew via a google form – our aim is for all help requests to be answered within 24hrs. Tech Crew will respond to the requests which they feel equipped to deal with. The Google form also feeds into a spreadsheet which enables us to later analyse how the system is being used.
There will also be blocks which provide information and support for each of the different software/hardware/other issues that teachers encounter. We are starting with MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Laptop issues, Outlook, and Room Equipment. However, this will be expanded into web based tools such as Google Docs, Gmail, Google Calendar, Mahara etc as they are rolled out.
MyPortfolio (Mahara ePortfolios) – Two of the Tech Crew are working alongside me to become familiar with this web tool. I am using it with two of my classes (Year 9 History and Y12 Web Design) in very different ways. I am attempting to model to other staff the possibilities. About midyear the tool will be promoted and we will have the Tech Crew expertise to support it.
Google Apps Education Edition – In about a months time the College will be rolling this out school wide. It will be a big change for staff and students alike. In preparation for this I and the Tech Crew have been using these Apps for communication and collaboration. We have a Tech Crew Google Calendar for planning. All communication is via Gmail and in particular we have a number of shared Google Docs. Two of the Tech Crew will also be administering the Apps site with me along with designing the site theme etc.
Digiweb Video Project – One of our Tech Crew members has been tasked with exploring how we can digitalize and share with the students/teachers all College owned video. This is a large project which he is undertaking but a very important one as, like many institutions, we need to find better ways to manage these valuable resources.

So as you can see, by involving these tech savvy students in assisting staff and our College wide shift to web applications we are able to achieve:

Technical and Application support for staff and students
Support for me by having a willing and capable team supporting the various projects
Tech Crew students gaining valuable leadership experience and being extended in their own ICT skills

I hope this post proves useful to you. I will be writing more about the above projects from time to time.