iTime, also known as Passion Projects and no doubt many other variations is a popular and essential element of our Primary School experience, what is it?
What is iTime?
iTime is an independent opportunities for students owned and student driven enquiry.
The "i" stands for a couple of things: inquiry: This is an opportunity for students to ask questions and learn about something they are interested in. individual: This is their project. They choose what they are going to do. They decide how best to present their learning. (http://gwaitime.weebly.com/)
iTime can focus on any endeavour that is practical to pursue in the classroom, from knitting, to learning a new language, to building a cardboard game arcade. But one of the challenges is managing the disparate resourcing requirements, and managing the logistics of this, especially if the students are working on this at home and at school, which, if they're really excited about it, is highly likely.
Enter digital technology. Now I'm not for one second advocating for iTime to purely focus on digital artefacts (as my examples above imply) but there's no doubt in my mind that focusing on creating and learning a digital skill to create a digital artefact is relatively simple to manage, assuming your students are fortunate enough to work in a 1:1 school like ours.
In order to facilitate this I created the document below to inspire students and teachers who are keen on using their iTime for something digital. This document will grow over time, and please feel free to suggest additional ideas in the comments below, and I will add them to the doc.
Five ways to get creative with tech: video, text, audio, and data.
They do, their children do, but now they have a way to help themselves too...
For decades society has been dominated by media such as books, comics, cinema, radio, and television — all are technologies, whether or not the users recognise it, all of which now have a digital equivalent, so that even if parents weren't familiar with the particular content their children engaged with, at least they could access and understand the medium, so that, if they wished to understand what their children were doing or share the activity with them, they could.
However, with the advent of digital media, things have changed. The demands of the computer interface are significant, rendering many parents to believe that they are 'dinosaurs' in an information age inhabited by their children.
Only in rare instances in history have children gained greater expertise than parents in skills highly valued by society. More usually, youthful expertise—in music, games, or imaginative play—is accorded little, serious value by adults, even if it is envied rather nostalgically. Thus, although young people’s newfound online skills are justifiably trumpeted by both generations, this doesn't help their parents much. For everyone of these mouse wielding, track pad savant, 'tech-savvy' students there is quite likely at least two not quite so tech-savvy parents - parents who often find themselves on the less competent end of the conversation - a conversation often sprinkled with a fair amount of eye ball rolling, groaning and huffing and puffing. Thankfully, the people at Google thought there had to be a better way...
The TeachParentsTech videos that attend to a range of simple tech support videos to help ameliorate this situation, you might even want to send them to your own mum, dad or uncle Vinnie. The videos are not perfect (they assume you are using a Mac) and hardly cover all the tech support questions you may be asked, or want to ask, but hopefully they’re a start.
Better than a click in the teeth, anyway.
Troubleshooting
With the considerable influx of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in classrooms these days, inevitably parents will find themselves increasingly faced with the challenge of providing adequate access to digital technologies at home, ie, a computer. To complicate matters further some of the resources that our students will be attempting to use can be quite demanding about the extent to which the home Windows PC or Mac is kept in efficient operating condition.
Following these (hopefully) simple pointers will mitigate a great many headaches for you as parents. For the purposes of this advice, I'm assuming you are using Chrome, you don't have to use Chrome, but it's the browser we recommend students to use in school, as it is the browser that plays nicely with everything Google.
Keep your browser/computer software up to date, the Internet is constantly evolving, and your computer needs to be constantly updated to keep up with it, so if you get a message prompting you to update your computer - do it! This not only keeps your machine working well, it also makes it less vulnerable to malicious attacks. An out of date computer is a computer that is vulnerable to exploitation, and one that will be frustrating to use as it struggles to 'keep up' with the pace of change of the Internet.
Direct your child to use the Google Chrome browser for their homework, this is the recommended browser at UWCSEA as well. Once your child as signed in and synced' all of the bookmarks, passwords, browsing history will magically follow them home as well as at school. The Chrome browser can be downloaded from here.
Keep your browser up to date! The above links above include a tutorial on this. This is very important, many of the Web 2.0 technologies your child will be directed to use are very demanding of the latest browser technologies. An out of date browser will struggle to cope with even the most basic tasks. The Google Chrome browser has a useful option of automating these updates, I highly recommend you use it.
Make sure your Adobe Flash Player is up to date. if in doubt click here to check to see if you have the latest version. This software is essential to run may of the awesome animations that are commonly used in these websites, such as Mathletics et al.
Check the speed of your home internet connection, either directly with your provider (eg Starhub) or using a free web service like http://www.speedtest.net/ (no account needed) where you should expect to see at least 4-5 Mbps (>10 is better) if you are attempting to access 'rich' media, like streaming video, presentations, or interactive media.
Sometimes odd behaviour in a web browser can be caused by 'cookies' that are interfering with the way you want your browser to behave.
If you clear out your cookies (something you should do regularly anyway) you can often find that resolves many problems. For normal (non techie) parents, Cookies are bits of code that are stored by websites on your computer to enable a site to 'remember' or 'recognise' you when you return to their website, like remembering your preferences etc.
Confused? Never mind, every browser has ways to do this, in the Chrome browser, just click Chrome on the Menu, and choose 'Clear Browsing Data' tick or untick as you see fit, just make sure the Cookies box is ticked, and then click the 'Clear browsing data' button. Don't panic, you can't do any major damage to your computer here.
Another alternative in Chrome is to browse using an incognito window, (File > New Incognito Window) which will force the browser to behave normally, since no cookies are stored.
Sharing a Home Computer
If you are a Primary school parent, you will probably need to share your computer at home with your child for them to do homework from time to time. This can be made easier by using a separate user account for each child, this can be as fancy as a completely separate user account for your child, instructions on how to set that up on a Mac here. This effectively makes your computer feel like your child's own computer, but it's a hassle if you want to be able to hop on and off without faffing about with account switching.
A simpler solution is to just agree that you will not use Chrome, just your child will, or, if you really prefer to use Chrome, create a separate user profile for your child within the Chrome browser, instructions on that here, or this post here. Now all your child has to do is choose their account, with a couple of clicks, and everything they've been working at at school will magically appear in their own copy of the browser, without affecting anything in yours (or vice versa).
Always remember (and use) the 'RQR' of troubleshooting:
Refresh (the browser)
Quit the browser and try again, or try a different browser)
Restart (the computer)
That's it.
Finally... you might want to consider creating a separate user account for your child/children, guidance on how to do this on a Mac can be found here. This in effect feels to your child like that computer is as good as their very own, until you log them out. Activating Fast user switching makes switching between their account and yours a very simple process.
A approach lots of people are exploring this year is how do we scaffold students towards conceptual understandings and track and assess this growth. In the work of Lynn Erickson and other theorists, this begins with the idea of concept formation or concept acquisition.
What do we mean by concepts?
As explained by Erickson, concepts are mental constructs that are abstract, timeless and universal. (Erickson & Lanning, 2014, p.33) They can be either broad in their context such as the concepts about change, interdependence or systems which are potentially interdisciplinary in nature or subject specific concepts such as velocity, unemployment or herbivores. These are also distinguished as macro or micro concepts, where micro concepts become evident in the depth of subject knowledge in each discipline.
Teaching to support conceptual acquisition:
One activity I see and utilise frequently is the classic sort, organise and group activity where you provide a wide arrange of examples relating to the concept and get students to identify similarities, differences and connections. In this Economics example, I was scaffolding students towards an understanding that:
products are related and the price change in one product can impact demand of related products. eg. complements and substitutes
In this case students quickly sort examples of products being substitutable or complementary to each other, but they often muddle the nuances of the relationship and the relative strengths of connections between goods that is evident when prices change.
Consolidating understanding: The Frayer Model
A perfect follow on activity is to use a diagram called the Frayer Model to get the students to record their understanding. The Frayer Model is essentially a graphical organiser you can use to capture either prior knowledge about a concept as a pre-assessment, to capture thinking after an activity, or as a tool to revisit and refine as students learn more about the concept through an inquiry.
an operational definition; in subject terminology what does the idea mean?
characteristics; what are the unique properties of the word that are shared by the examples.
examples; in what examples are these properties clearly illustrated?
non-examples; in what examples are these properties not illustrated?
The prompt asking students to list non-examples is really important as this is where you can identify some misconceptions. For instance peanut butter and jam (or jelly) might seems to be a complement for some people, but might be substitutes for others and a non-example.
Capturing the thinking: Google Slides
You can of course facilitate this in different ways e.g. pairs, groups on poster paper, but I have found using a Google Slides template as an effective way of scaffolding the students but also being able to track their work. It is a good tool where you can give comments, and where students can go back to as the learning progresses and make changes. It is also useful if you want students to scroll and see other students examples and ideas.
Together the two approaches are an important tool to help students build understanding which can later help them transfer and apply ideas to other situations.
Other related posts to explore:
The following are posts written by colleagues at the East Campus of United World College of South East Asia in Singapore. These cover the same ideas but from different subject angles.
Also known as 2-step verification, means making your account more secure by requiring a second device—usually your mobile phone—to authorise your access to your account. If you use online banking you've probably being doing this for years, but the second factor was a dongle, not the most convenient of devices to have on hand, whereas most of us usually have a mobile phone within reach. To learn more about this process from Google, click here.
1. Initiate Setup - SMS
You may not wish to use your personal number for this, that's okay, you can just use it to initiate the process, and then choose another method afterwards.
To start the setup process, click here. It's relatively straightforward, but you will (obviously) need access to your mobile phone to complete the set-up.
Once you've complete this step there is no need to continue unless you'd like to add/change your preferred 2FA method, which I would encourage.
If find tapping in random codes tedious, or/and you don't always use the same mobile number, then you will want to opt for the ADD GOOGLE PROMPT option, using the Google App, or the GMail App. You'll need to install the app on your phone and sign into your college account. Then you'll be able to add this option, so instead of typing in a code that's been texted to you, you can just tap YES to a prompt from the app.
As a third option, (or as an alternative to using the Google App) you can use the Google Authenticator App this will generate the codes you need.
Once you've installed the Authenticator app on your smartphone, when you log into your college google account providing your user name and password to the site, then you can run the Authenticator app. The app displays a six-digit one-time password.
Shared Accounts
For role-based and departmental accounts the person primarily responsible for checking or using the account should set-up the verification process. All of the above methods are available, as you can add multiple mobile numbers to one account as back-up options to receive the code. So each person who needs access to that shared account, can add their mobile number to the same account.
If you are using the Authenticator App, then you can have multiple accounts linked to the App on one phone. So again, each person with access can link their Authenticator App to the shared account.
Receiving a voice call to a fixed line or even printing out a set of codes are other possibilities. It is best to set-up at least two of the options to provide alternatives.
Finally, you can generate and save a set of back-ups codes from the alternative second step options. Obviously, do not leave these codes next to a computer!
The challenge with assessment is giving targeted and goal directed feedback quickly to students so they can improve and move forward with the learning. Our Online Learning Platform (Teamie) can help streamline this process for both teachers and students so you can spend less time worrying about finding student work and copying and pasting feedback and work more efficiently.
This blog post outlines how to;
Take a rubric containing reportables and our new scale and add this to Teamie
Create an assignment to collect in a Google Doc
Associate the rubric with created assignment
Give targeted feedback based on your reportables
If you want to video version of this guide jump here.
Why are rubrics an important assessment tool?
This is an example of a rubric that we are creating to help give feedback to students. The example shown here illustrates the connection between our five point scale and what is possible for each learning outcome or "I Can Statement."
For instance it is hard for students to demonstrate an exemplary ability in some of the communication skills goals such as writing a claim, so the box is greyed out.
For the rubric to be an effective assessment tool the task itself needs to be designed and written in such as way that it aligns with the learning outcomes we have chosen, thus giving students scope to reach the top levels. The alignment of assessment method such as a selected response, written or performance task to the learning outcome is always crucial in giving students clear opportunities to succeed.
Getting started with Rubrics in Teamie:
You can take the same text as shown above and add this into Teamie to create your own rubric which can be attached to an assignment. Assignments allow you to collect in one or more documents from each student and track attempts, deadlines and send notifications.
There is no magic button where you can import any random rubric in a Google Doc into Teamie as the formatting is always different but the online editor is easy to use.
Firstly, you need to first make an assignment from which you can attach a rubric to as shown below.
You now have the option to either search the rubric bank for ones that colleagues have made. (search by name) or to create your own one from a blank template. Click to create from top right corner.
You will always be able to go back and reuse your rubrics when you next make an assignment.
The following screenshot shows the rubric editor. You begin with one criteria and four levels which you can all adjust. All of the text boxes are editable but when you actually mark the work online you can see the criteria title but need to hover to see the detailed criteria.
To take the original rubric I began by copying the learning goals into the heading and some of the other detail into the descriptor. I then copied the scale descriptors into the boxes as shown below. Once complete there is a clever duplicate button which saves time when adding the next criteria.
Then duplicating allows you to add subsequent criteria but keep the same scales. Some departments might choose to give more specific guidance for each scale specific to assessed learning goals or "I Can Statements" but you can equally keep this the same and simpler for students to use.
Using your rubric to provide feedback on student work:
Once you have made the rubric you can step to open a submission and give feedback. You can open the rubric from the right hand sidebar and you can drag it around the page. Once you click on the level it will automatically save your selection.
You can also leave more precise feedback on each learning outcome by clicking on the add comment option at the end of each learning outcome title. This will save you comment in either text or audio to the sidebar comment stream so students can see. You can hide these comments from students.
Publishing and viewing assessment data from your Markbook
For students to see you final feedback you will need to go back to the assignment submission page and select all and then publish grades for them to be notified of the feedback. A clever trick is to publish these all at once in class and ask students to reflect and add their own learning goals into the comment stream for you to refer back to.
The collated data across multiple assignments that you mark within Teamie is available in your markbook and you can select on one student to see an overview of the year. Eventually you will be able to see a mastery overview of how students are progressing against all of your learning goals for multiple assessments but you might have to wait until next year for this !
Google Photos is the newest and slightly hidden gem of the Google Suite which allows you to, backup manage and share photos easily. It is perfect for when you are on a field trip and want to share some photos with your class or with parents and want to avoid the confusion of shared folders. I have used the app on the bus back to school and have shared everything before I needed to rush back to class.
The app and online version continues to update now allowing you the ability to
create and share albums with anyone
create a collaborative album for others to contribute images
create animated gifs with a series of photos
make and download a collage with selected photos
within the phone app make a movie with selected pics
Have an explore with the quick guide below either using your work account for school photos of personal account. You have the option to automatically sync your photos in the background to your online account or alternatively you can manually select which photos you wish to backup. When you delete a photo from your camera roll a copy can be left online.
Screen recording, or Screencasts are one of most most effective teaching tools in the arsenal of a teacher who is fortunate to be work in a 'technology enhanced learning environment' but, if the devices you have to hand are laptops, not tablets, than expecting your students to create a screencast can be more of a hassle than it's worth.
That is unless you know how to record and flip.
I've used demonstrated this technique before in a context of asking students to model a skill with apparatus, such as how they can measure an angle with a protractor, but with a little imagination it's not difficult to see how this could be used in other ways:
Mapping skills in Humanities
Rationale for a design proposal in Design & Technology
Description of the significance of imagery in the Visual Arts
Mind Mapping relationships and connections
Reflection on ideas and opportunities for development in a flash draft in English
Reflection/critique of a passage/excerpt in a printed book/magazine
Annotation of musical notation to indicate understanding of the structure
Annotation of diagrams, graphs, and charts
Explaining a strategy or process in solving a Mathematics problem
and many more...
All the students need is a whiteboard or a sheet of paper, and to position it as shown above. They can tap the spacebar to start and stop the recording.
Once the recording is finished the student can flip the video horizontally and vertically, then review and trim* the video is necessary before sharing it with the teacher.
An Example from Mathematics
Here's one I did earlier...**
*If the student has done a great deal of 'umming and ahhing' they can delete the segments of the video that are unimportant, but most of the time this is probably unnecessary as you're not looking for a highly polished artefact here, and hesitation (when and why) may well be useful information in and of itself.
Student Example
** Disclaimer, the hesitation you see in this video was intentional in order to create a sense of authenticity, honest, it's true!
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