Getting to grips with Google

The array of spaces and places where children’s work is created, published, stored and presented can be overwhelming for both parents and students. This blog post will explain the different places that children will be working in and give you some ways to support your children when working at home.

Google Chrome

Students are asked to use Google Chrome to access content from the internet. There are a few reasons for this. My favourite reason is that Chrome has the option to sign in and link bookmarks created on one computer to any other.

Installing Google Chrome on your home computer (it works on Mac and non Apple machines) will allow your child to work in the same environment as they do at school. If parents have another Chrome account set up on the home computer the students will need to log out of that and then log in with their own details for their school bookmarks to show up. More details on setting up a Chrome account are here. In the same article there is information about setting up a separate account on your home computer for your children to use as well as some useful troubleshooting tips care of Sean McHugh, Digital Literacy Coach, Dover campus.

In class the children have been shown how to create a bookmark in one of these ways:

Pushing the Command and D keys

Clicking the star at the end of the address bar

Clicking Bookmarks > Bookmark this page




Dragging the address onto the Bookmarks bar is a quick and simple alternative to the methods above.

The students have also been shown how to log in to Chrome using their school email address and password.

The UWCSEA portal

This website is one way in to UWCSEA online life for parents and students. Children are able to get to their email through here as well as see their timetable for the day and any notices aimed at them. To log in they type their username (e.g. smith1234) and Gmail password.

Parents can also log in and see information about their child and about the college.

Class sites

Students can find their class website by navigating through ‘Learning Programme Overview’ > ‘Junior School’ and choosing their grade and then their class teacher. Parents can see these sites by asking their child to log in. Most class sites have been shared in class already. Once they have found the site they should have it bookmarked for quick and easy future access. The main purpose of class sites are for teachers to push everyday information to students (upcoming events, timetable, class trip information, homework, etc) and for students to join in online class discussions in a safe and controlled environment. Learning how to post a comment that shares their thinking and then responding to the comments of others is a skill that is becoming increasingly useful.

‘Why not have a real life discussion in person, in the classroom?’ I hear you ask. We do I promise and these happen everyday. The added beauty of these online discussions is that they can take place anywhere and at any time, therefore extending the boundaries of the physical classroom. There are also many instances when those quieter children who don’t feel comfortable contributing in front of larger groups of people will share their thinking and views more readily in an online environment. It also gives some time for processing to occur. Mulling over someone's comment and allowing time before responding can make way for added ideas.

Learning Journals

Last year we moved from paper portfolios to an online Learning Journal using Google Sites as a platform. Much of the work that the children were doing in class prior to this wasn’t able to be reflected in their paper portfolio so this shift allowed students to choose from a wider array of work. We also shifted our thinking in terms of the pieces included. The term “learning journal” describes an ongoing process of documentation and reflection lead by the student and supported by the teacher. This process is supported by the UWCSEA Learning Principles.

We believe that students should understand the purpose of their learning, have ownership over it and have regular opportunities to actively process and reflect. The Learning Journal provides a medium for these aims. It houses a collection of student work that shows progression of learning over time. It provides students with ongoing opportunities to reflect on their learning and to notice the changes in their skills, knowledge and understanding across their academic programme. It travels with students throughout their time in Primary School and is shared with families regularly.

The essential elements of the Learning Journal include visual, oral or written samples of children engaged in learning. Examples include:
Rough drafts and final drafts
Reflections on learning
Photos, videos of learning process or products
Assessments
Teacher comments
A selection from each academic area (Maths, Literacy, UoI) and specialist area
UWC profile

We want to shift away from purely product and move more towards process so you should expect to see work that is in its beginning stages, work that may be unfinished, work that is in draft form with revisions and comments as well as finished work. You should also expect to see a range of media - videos, photos as well as handwritten and typed ‘work’. An important element of the Learning Journal process is reflection. Why have I included this piece in my Learning Journal? What does this piece of work demonstrate about me as a writer? How has my thinking changed over the course of this unit of study?

As John Dewey, American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, states “We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience.” The reflective piece is important in making sense of learning and can help to shape a child’s view of their development.

The Learning Journal will be shared in the early part of the academic year and you will be able to watch it grow as your child adds to it with support and guidance from their class teacher.

Children will be working on their Learning Journals in class, but from time to time they may be asked to finish a task at home. They will need to log into Chrome and then click on their Learning Journal bookmark.

Once their Learning Journal is on screen they will need to navigate to the correct subject page and click the ‘New Post’ button to create a post about their latest work. Sometime they will need to edit a post they have already created.

Google Documents

‘Google docs’ as they are affectionately known are part of the Google suite of tools that accompanies a Google email address. (If you have a personal Gmail address you’ll have access to these tools as well). On the face of it a Google doc looks very similar to a Word or Pages document. Students can type and format text as they would in any word processing program. They can insert images and tables and track their changes. Where Google docs comes into it’s own is the sharing feature. As soon as a doc has been created students can share this with their teacher or their Writing Partner, for example, using their school email address. This sharing allows collaborators to work inside the same document. It also has the ability for a person to leave a comment about a particular word or section, very helpful when a Writing Partner is helping to edit a piece of work. There are varying levels of permissions starting at ‘View only’ all the way up to ‘Can edit’.

Also within the Google suite there is Google sites (to create websites to host a range of content), Google Sheets (to create spreadsheets), Google Slides (for presentations similar to Keynote and PowerPoint), Google Drawings (to create charts and diagrams) and Google Forms (to create surveys and collect data from people). These other tools are used in different subject areas and to varying degrees in different grade levels.

Google Drive

This is the place where students file all of the work they do. It can be accessed from any computer, anywhere, by logging into Google Mail. There is a button that gives access to Google Drive in the top right hand side of the screen.

If the children are using a Google doc then they can work on it within the Chrome browser window. If they are working on a Pages, Keynote or similar non Google document they will need to download it, work on it and then re-upload it when they are done.

Google Drive is our go-to filing system as the storage is online. If a child’s laptop has to be wiped for some reason then all of their work is safely stored and can be reconnected when their laptop is returned to them. More information about Google Drive is available here

Don't Just Stand There, Reflect on Something!

"Don't just do something, stand there!" 

That could just as easily have been the title of this post, except I wanted to get the critical word 'REFLECT' in there somewhere. The point is, in the midst of the frenetic pace that is our typical school today, it is rare occasion that anyone actually makes time to stop. Stop and think.

Reflection has to be one the hardest things to encourage students to do well, and yet, if we are serious about our students retaining what they learn, cultivating the self awareness that is at the heart of the UWCSEA Profile it's something we not only cannot afford to ignore, but something we need to make a regular, essential element of our classroom practice.

A common objection when this subject comes up is something along the lines of,

'I would if I could, if I had time' 

But as the research highlighted in this post highlights, the fact is, if you want the time you invest in teaching your students to really matter, if your students are going to have any hope of retaining, long term,  what they learn in your classroom, then

... you can't afford to ignore making time for your students to reflect on their learning. 

Why? Because they only learn by thinking about what they have learned.

The conversation about what kids need to know and to be able to do by the end of high school has gradually shifted over the past several years to emphasize not just rigorous content goals, but also less tangible skills, such as creative thinking, problem-solving and collaboration. That shift has brought schools that are practicing “deeper learning” into focus.


The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been a big supporter of this work, defining deeper learning as a model that focuses on critical thinking, communication, collaboration, academic mindsets and learning how to learn, all through rigorous content. New research conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) has found that the deeper learning model does have positive learning outcomes for students, regardless of their background.

“One of the things that we saw in these schools was that the teachers and students themselves were constantly engaged in thinking about what students were learning, and the students were reflecting on their learning and trying to improve it.”

Learning by thinking

Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance: a team of researchers from HEC Paris, Harvard Business School, and the University of North Carolina describe what they call the first empirical test of the effect of reflection on learning. By “reflection,” they mean taking time after a lesson to synthesize, abstract, or articulate the important points.

Participants completed a math brain teaser under time pressure and wrote about what strategy they used or might use in the future to solve the problem. This group did 18 percent better in a second-round test than their control-group counterparts, who were not given time to reflect. In the field study, groups of newly-hired customer-service agents undergoing job training were compared. Some were given 15 minutes at the end of each training day to reflect on the main things they had learned and write about at least two lessons. Those given time to think and reflect scored 23 percent better on their end-of-training assessment than those who were not. And these improvements weren't temporary—researchers found they lasted over time.

This study sheds more light on this practice than ever, and what follows is my attempt to sum up their findings as succinctly as I can.

Emphases and content [inside brackets] are mine.

You can access the original paper here.


Research on learning has primarily focused on the role of doing (experience) in fostering progress over time. In this paper, we propose that one of the critical components of learning is reflection, or the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience. Drawing on dual-process theory, we focus on the reflective dimension of the learning process and propose that learning can be augmented by deliberately focusing on thinking about what one has been doing. [...] We find a performance differential when comparing learning-by-doing alone to learning-by-doing coupled with reflection. Further, we hypothesize and find that the effect of reflection on learning is mediated by greater perceived self-efficacy. Together, our results shed light on the role of reflection as a powerful mechanism behind learning. (Abstract)

...
Individual learning can be augmented when individuals can not only “do” but also “think” about what they have been doing. In doing so, we depart from previous work equating direct learning with only learning-by-doing and introduce the construct of “learning-by-thinking”—i.e., learning that comes from reflection and articulation of the key lessons learned from experience. (p 4)

Reflection— is the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience. Reflecting on what has been learned makes experience more productive.

Reflection builds one's confidence in the ability to achieve a goal (i.e., self-efficacy), which in turn translates into higher rates of learning. [Or appreciating ones own capacity, efficacy, achievements; eg, I am good at/better at ...] (p 5)


The automatic, unconscious process of learning generated by “doing” becomes more effective if deliberately coupled with the controlled, conscious attempt at learning by “thinking.” In doing so, we extend literature claiming that the capacity to reflect on action is necessary for practitioners to learn (Schön, 1983) [from surface to deep] (p 6)

It's not enough to just think about it, you have to express it, share it.

The process of transforming tacit into codified knowledge requires a cognitive investment that generates a deeper understanding of this knowledge. 

We contribute to this literature by providing empirical evidence of the benefits associated with knowledge codification and uncovering the mechanisms behind them. Our findings suggest that the benefits of codification are not affected whether its purpose is for self-reflection or for sharing know-how with others. [Whether it is a private diary, or whether it is a public journal, like a blog.]

The automatic, unconscious process of learning generated from experience is coupled with the controlled, conscious attempt at learning by reflection. (p 8)

The automatic, unconscious process of learning generated by doing can become more effective if deliberately coupled with controlled, conscious attempts at learning-by-thinking. In particular, we expect individuals to perform significantly better on subsequent tasks when they think about what they learned from the task they completed. (p 9)

Theories of knowledge codification (Cowan, David, and Foray, 2000; Nonaka, 1994; Nonaka and Von Krogh, 2009) shed light on another potential benefit to the knowledge holder of sharing knowledge. Those theories suggest that,

... the reflection effort needed to create the insights to be shared with a counterpart may end up generating a deeper understanding of the problem space itself. 

This deeper understanding benefits the knowledge holder in terms of improved problem-solving capacity. In particular, we would expect the improvement in problem-solving capacity generated by reflection aimed at sharing to be greater than the improvement generated by reflection alone. In other words, one can expect performance to increase the most when reflection and sharing, i.e., thinking and teaching, are coupled. This line of argument should be familiar to those who teach and subscribe to the adage that one learns the most on a subject by being forced to teach it. (p 10)

Though reflection entails the high opportunity cost of one's time, we argue and show that reflecting after completing tasks is no idle pursuit: it can powerfully enhance the learning process.

Learning, we find, can be augmented if one deliberately focuses on thinking about what one has been doing. In addition to showing a significant performance differential when comparing learning-by-doing alone to learning-by-doing coupled with reflection, we also demonstrate that the effect of reflection on learning is mediated by greater self-efficacy. (p 26)
...

Individual learning can be augmented when individuals can not only “do” but also “think” about what they have been doing.

Learning Journals

Our results also have important practical implications. In our field study we showed that taking time away from training [teaching] and reallocating that time to reflection actually improved individual performance. Companies [Schools] often use tools such as learning journals as a way to encourage reflection in training [teaching] and regular operations. Our personal experience is that individuals of all ages may not treat these exercises with much seriousness; however, our findings suggest that they should. Our study highlights that it may be possible to train [teach] and learn “smarter”, not “harder” (p 27)
...

Individual learning is enhanced by deliberately focusing on thinking about what one has been doing. 

Together, our results reveal reflection to be a powerful mechanism behind learning, confirming the words of American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer John Dewey:

“We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience.” 

Self-aware - Reflection

Practical pointers

So how does this look in our Learning Journals? As we use Google Sites as our learning platform, I've posted examples/models on our Google Site here. 

Reflection inline on a site page

Reflection as an ongoing journal within folder

In fact any file that is stored within Google Drive allows the ability to comment, and even have a reflective/feedback dialogue with within Drive:

Here's a slideshow of some possibilities to make this simple, and therefore easy to build into regular lessons:

Further Reading

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Søren Kierkegaard

Getting into the Habit of Reflection
Purposeful Reflection
Learning Through Reflection

Or if you prefer, here are my annotated versions:

Getting into the Habit of Reflection

Purposeful Reflection

Learning Through Reflection

In addition here's a link to some really useful resources from Kath Murdoch, adapted from her book 'Take a Moment'.

References

Di Stefano G, Gino F, Pisano GP, & Staats BR (2014). Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance. Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper, (14-093), 14-093. Chicago

Murdoch K (2005). Take a Moment: 40 frameworks for reflective thinking. Seastar Education Consulting.

Schön D (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Conversation transforms learning in Google Docs and NON Google Docs, in Google Drive

Many educators have now discovered the phenomenal potential of Google Doc commenting to transform learning and teaching. If you don't know about Google Doc commenting, see some of the other posts on this, here, or here.

Used effectively Google Doc comments are another very effective illustration of what I believe are the 5 transformative elements of ICTs - SAMMS, they are:

Google Drive & Situated Learning

Situated - Comment anywhere, any space, any place that is suitable to you.

Access - link to references and resources anywhere on the wild wonderful web to support feedback, or to push/extend content further.

Multimodal - with Add-ons like Kaizena you can even add audio to your feedback, of course you can link to all sorts of rich web content, like online simulations to resolve a particular misconception, and students can easily create a screen recording to narrate their 'learning journey' through a beautifully busy comment thread. Revision history is great for this as well.

Mutable - Comments aren't locked they slip, slide and glide, anywhere they need to, but always tethered to the context that makes them meaningful, and of course comments can easily be edited/modified to clarify feedback, to better articulate reasoning, or maybe just to choose a more appropriate term.

Social - Commenting that is isolated is not much more than replacement tech, albeit without the need to squeeze your extended feedback into a scrawl that is so tightly packed into the margins of the page that it looks like a herd of spiders... No, to amplify or transform reflection and feedback, invite collaborators into the document, then stand back and watch in awe, as turning this document into a mini 'social network' radically redefines reflection, from 'me, me, me' to 'we, we, we'.

So what are you waiting for? You can view this album of screenshots for ways of how you can do this, or see an example below:

Image comments can refer to specific elements of the image, or be more holistic.

Learning Journals in the Early Years

It's early days but our concerted efforts to realise the first examples of ePortfolios AKA Learning Journals in the Early Years are starting to take shape.

Why Learning Journals, what's wrong with Portfolio?

We feel that the term 'Portfolio' has a tendency to imply product over process, best work over, well, work. What we really want to see is the 'journey' of learning, yes the final 'product', but arguably more importantly, the process of learning that the student/teacher documented on the way there.

Here's a tantalising glimpse of two our Kindergarten classes K1 and K2, trust me when I tell you that the actual contents are truly transformational, no, revolutionary when compared to the pretty but teacher centred, relatively passive paper counterparts. Unfortunately as these are live journals, I can't share access to the journals themselves.

More to follow later in the year when they are more representative of an entire years learning, but for now, the strategy in a nutshell is:

• Teachers who are not 'techie' but are great teachers, and ready to learn
• Build a 'capture culture' in every classroom, not just the teacher, the kids.
• Lot's of devices in the hands of the kids—2:1 iPads, and 6 iPod touches in every classroom
• Every teacher with a MacBook, and an iPad
• Tools: iOS Devices, iPhoto, iCloud and Picasa
• An amazing school that stops at nothing to provide teachers with whatever they could possibly need to innovate, create and excel at cultivating & motivating learning.

Work flow:

• We set up iCloud accounts for each classroom, and connect every iOS device in that room to that account.
• We activated PhotoStream in a separate account on the classroom teacher's Mac (to avoid PhotoStream conflict)
• Now any content saved to the camera roll on any device (screen capture makes this very easy) connected to that classroom account wirelessly loads directly into the teacher's PhotoStream—a stream of class capture culture consciousness... 
• In iPhoto, Teachers 'curate' content from the stream, dragging 'critical incidents' into an album that they have created for each child.
• Captions are added using the 'Info' button in iPhoto
• Video is not supported by PhotoStream so that has to be downloaded manually into iPhoto
• When teachers are ready, each album is Exported to Picasa directly from iPhoto, with video that's about 10 minutes per album, with a decent connection
• Once they are all uploaded, each album is then shared by the teacher with parents via email directly from Picasa (or Google+ Photos) this takes about an hour.

iPhoto Photo Stream - Reflecting Classroom Capture Culture

#rEvolutionary

Reality Check:

This model could be replicated using as little as ONE iOS device, ie a teacher iPhone,  and one Apple Mac computer (all come with iPhoto as standard) it just means that the teacher would have to do the capturing, instead of the kids. Even one shared class iOS device would make capturing learning by students possible as well, obviously the more devices you can out in the hands of the kids, the easier it is to capture their learning, but the more content you will need to curate!