Happy Blog-iversary

I’ve been counting down the weeks and finally it’s here! I have now been blogging once a week for a year! Although technically this blog started on January 14th 2012, I didn’t start regularly blogging until May 26th 2012 when I discovered WYSIWYG blog editors.

I originally wanted to document my journey as I set out to use a iPad 2 in my teaching. But I have been amazed by how much my teaching has changed since then.

So here are some of things I discovered or tried out this year:

I experimented with a few different teacher planners,

Teachers Attaché which I liked for it’s easy use and ability to create lesson plans that linked to classes.

Learnboost which I liked because I could also access it from a desktop, but it was difficult to use on my iPad.

Teacherkit which I liked for it’s easy to use format, and last but not least

iTeacherbook which I am trialling with one class (feedback soon).

I ended up comparing the different planners I had tried out, but I think my favourite one so far has been TeacherKit.

I found out some useful apps to help me make revision resources. From crosswords to interactive quizzes that utilised pupil smart phones (both Socrative, and it’s update, and eClicker). I also showed you one of the low tech games we play (shared through Dropmark).

I discovered social media (well I didn’t discover it, I was already an active user – I just hadn’t realised how useful it could be for education). I set up my ‘teacher twitter‘ account and have discovered lots of people to follow (hmm, I really should do an update about that soon), tried out Facebook (first with pages, then more successfully with a group).

After using iTunes U myself, I also started creating content for my pupils to use outside of the lesson. From setting up iTunes U to finishing my first course (which quite a few pupils have already started using). I am now working with our head of ICT to set our school iTunes U area so that there is a central place to access courses created by teachers within the school. We are also hoping it will encourage more of our teachers to create courses as well.

I applied to be an Apple Distinguished Educator, and although I didn’t get it I learnt a lot about using iMovie. My department YouTube account has been gradually growing and my pupils find it a useful place to go and look at evaluation videos from previous years.

One of the most exciting things (I think) that happened was my school starting an iPad trial for a group of teachers. Since this started, I have been asked to run some inset training for fellow teachers on how I use technology in my teaching. I ran one about Socrative, which was quite popular. There are now quite a few teachers who are using it in their lessons. I was also asked to run a session for the iPad trial group showing the core apps I use, it was quite nerve racking!

So that has been my year, well not all of it just a quick overview (although writing this has made me realise that I really need to update my App Review page!). Thank you so much for being part of it (I still can’t believe that – at the point of writing this – I have 104 people following my blog), I hope you will join me for what will hopefully be another year of investigation.

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Facebook Groups and Other Updates!

I have been trying out a lot of new things this year, and as you try things out you learn what works and what doesn’t. I thought it would be useful to revisit one of things I trialled last term, especially as it didn’t work very well!

You may remember me posting about setting up a Facebook page for my Yr11s to give information regarding revision etc. I quickly discovered that a ‘page’ didn’t really work, because the pupils hadn’t ‘liked’ the page they didn’t get the notifications. So I decided to look at Facebook’s options again.

I decided to consult an expert (namely a year 10 pupil) who has set up several pages and groups on Facebook. After a chat about various options, it seemed that creating a group would work better.

So at the start of the controlled assessment with my Year 10s, I decided to set up a group on Facebook as a triall to compare it to the ‘page’ I had tried before.

I looked carefully at the setting and privacy options in the group settings:

I set it so that any group member could invite people to the group, but I had to approve all of them. Also only I could post messages to the group, but pupils could comments on postings (I can delete what they post if necessary).

On my teacher Facebook account I have no friends. This proved problematic, as you can only invite friends to groups. So I turned again to my ‘expert’ and he agreed to friend me so that I could add him to the group.

Once he was in the group I could ‘unfriend’ him, but he could now invite other members of the class who were his friends to the group. Within 12 hours all of the class had been invited to the group (I was impressed by how quickly it spread through the pupils).

It has been very interesting seeing how the pupils interact with the group, in the picture above one of the boys is reminding another of the required work for the upcoming deadline. It later transpired that he was replying to a message this boy had sent him earlier, specifically asking what work needed to be done!

Another interesting feature is that I could set up deadlines as events and see which of them had read the post.

We’ve been trialling this for a few weeks. So far it is much better than a ‘page’, but I am still waiting to see how this fares long term.

Another update, I posted a while ago about the end of controlled assessment and I promised to show you some of the finished products. Well the products are now on display, and my amazing technician has been making custom built plinths to show the work off.

So here are some of the products, rotating spice rack, Mondrian themed bedside unit, Rackets press, MP3 Speaker, Saxaphone stand, CD rack and another storage unit (this time Art Deco themed).

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Socrative – New Features

I discovered (through my twitter feed) that Socrative had released some new features. You may remember this blog post from last year when I first started using Socrative.

Socrative now let’s you include images and automatically marked short answer questions, which is very useful in a quick quiz situation when pupils want to know who won!

I’ve been experimenting with the image feature first, as it is the most useful for my subject. So far I am impressed with its possibilities, but it does seem to have some limitations. Let me show you how it works first and then discuss the minor problem I am having.

Now when you start to write a quiz you are presented with the option to ‘add image’ to each question.

As with most apps you have the choice of using an existing image, or taking a new one.

You can see here my finished questions about mechanical fixings, with included picture!

Then when you run the quiz, this picture will appear under the question but before the answer on the pupils device. This is where I ran into a small problem. When I tried it out on my iPhone, this is what I was presented with:

The picture was huge! I thought it was just my choice of picture, so I tried it out with an icon sized image of the same thing, but the picture was still huge – just more pixelated.

This would work well on a computer screen, as there would be more space. But I am mainly using Socrative on pupil devices, and some of them have even smaller screens than my iPhone.

I think that this has great potential, I am just really hoping that the picture size can be sorted out soon!

On a separate note, this Saturday I am taking part in an annual tradition at my school called ‘Apposition’. Whilst it is a lovely event, it does take up almost all of my Saturday (which as most teachers know are quite precious). Anyway, we are (to my knowledge) the only school that does this. So if you want to find out more then there is a great description of it on the schools Wikipedia entry. The event is steeped in history, and it remonds me how long my school has been around for! We get to dress up in our academic gown and hood (which makes for a very colourful staff room, I will be resplendent in navy blue, gold and turquoise), listen to some amazing speeches from pupils (last year we had the mathematics behind juggling 11 balls explained to us – it was quite fascinating), see our senior pupils get awarded prizes and then have lunch with parents of prize winners.

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Some Organisation

My Year 11s are about to go on study leave, which means 3 things. First, I've prepared them as much as I can, provided them with resources (both in paper form and on the intranet), its now up to them to revise in which ever way they prefer. Second, invigilation season is soon going to be here (I find invigilating incredibly tedious, but it needs to be done). Third, I don't have scheduled lessons with my year 11s any more (which gives me some 'free' time), so I can start planning for next year.

Because my subject is very project based (after all, the best to learn how a mortise and tenon joint works is to make one), I spend most of my summer term (and start of the holidays) perfecting the projects I want to run the following year.

This involves lots of planning, making one (to see if it is pupil friendly), costing the materials used, writing schemes of work and making all the resources to go with the project. Each year I try and update at least one year group project. Last year it was my Year 9 project, in which we make an MP3 speaker. That is now working well, so it can stay the same for next year.

This was my example project from last year

So this year it is the turn of my Year 10s. We spend most of Year 10 doing mini making projects, as most of them have not really used the machines in the workshop. So I want to introduce a mainly metal working project.

I am currently in the planning stage, scribbling down various ideas on whatever is to hand. On my iPad I have quite a few notebook apps (I download them when they are free, I really should have a purge at some point).

 

My favourite one is Penultimate. This notebook is really good, partly becuase it works really well with my stylus (the Adonit Jot Pro) and also because it syncs with Evernote.

These are my current scribblings in Penultimate.

I am not a dedicated Evernote user, I don't sync every single note I make to it. But in this case it is useful, I can note down my ideas, and because it syncs to Evernote I can then show other people on my iPhone or their desktop computer via the Evernote website. Very useful when you want to get people's comments on the current thinking.

 

I've started making the first prototype of next years project, I'll let you know how it goes!

 

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Easy Mind Maps

The education year tends to be quite circular, so as my Year 11s finish their controlled assessment (and I am in the throes of marking and moderating) my Year 10s are just starting their controlled assessment.

One of the first things they have to do is analyse the task they have chosen in the form of a mind map. In previous years we have used PowerPoint to do this (as they produce all of their written work in PowerPoint), but this is quite a labour intensive process involving adding shapes to the slides and joining them with conecting lines.

My pupils were finding this quite frustrating, so I encouraged them to look for alternatives and they came across ExamTime. After trying it out with my two classes, and having good reviews from my pupils, I thought I would share it with you.

Examtime is currently free, and it looks like the current features will remain free. You can make a variety of revision resources, but most importantly you can make mind maps.

It’s also easy to set up your resources by subject. You just tap the + button to add a new subject.

I used ExamTime during the lesson to demonstrate how a mind map works. It was very easy to use, even on an iPad.

Here you can see the beginnings of a mind maps all about the design task to ‘Design and make a gadget tidy’

The mind map I created automatically saved to my area, so I could easily log in again to work on it some more. During the lesson one of pupils accidentally closed his Internet browser and was quite worried that he had lost all of his work, but because it saved as he worked he could log back in and continue working.

You can see here my saved mind map, ready to be opened again and worked on. When my pupils had finished they could either print screen the finished image and paste it into their PowerPoint, or they could export it as a PDF and do a similar thing.

We were really impressed with ExamTime, and how easy and intuitive it was to use. I will be recommending to pupils again in the future.

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Revision – Games

We are now well underway into revision time with my GCSE class one of the things my pupils need to be able to do it identify tools and machines. They need to know what it is called, and what it is used for. There are a lot of tools and machines in my subject! Although they will have used most of them over the course of the 2 years, they still find it difficult to associate the right name with an image.

So I get them to play matching games at the start of the lesson. It only takes about 5 mins, and they get quite competitive with each other.

It is a very simple game to make, there are 3 cards for each tools. One has the picture, one the name and one a description. I’ve laminated them so they last longer.

I’m sure you’re wondering by now why I am posting about this, surely this blog is all about the use of technology in the classroom! After the pupils have finished matching (and got them all correct) I remind them to use their phone to take a photo of the tools they struggled to match (making sure all 3 cards are in view). That way they have a photo flash card to revise from later. My pupils last year informed me that this was quite useful once they were on study leave.

Another thing they can do is download the matching game from our intranet, so they can make it at home (it’s arranged so that the squares are already matched on the sheet). As you don’t have access to our intranet, I have uploaded the games to Dropmark. So if you would like a copy for your class (or just for fun) you can find it here.

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Sharing Files (the easy way)

As well as using Dropbox, which I posted about before, I also use another cloud service purely for sharing files with others. It is called Dropmark.

The main reason for this is I don’t want these files clogging up my dropbox (where I store my everyday files), plus it is extremely easy to share files through Dropmark.

Let me give you a quick guide tour:

The main dashboard has a series of folders called ‘collections’, which you can set individual permissions for.

So if you wanted to access my ‘Socrative Inset’ collection (which I shared the link for when I posted about the training I ran) you would need the link to the folder (which is right here).

Alternatively, the SOW789 collection is shared with just one other person, so they have been emailed the link through Dropmark. They don’t need to have a Dropmark account to view and download the files.

It is very easy to add new collections, the only limit you have (with the basic free account) is you have a maximum of 250MB space. As with all other cloud accounts, you can pay to have more space.

To add files to collections you simply drag and drop them (if you are on a normal computer) or click add file if on an iPad. There is also a Mac app which makes uploading to Dropmark even easier.

Becuase there are so many different cloud services available, it is really down to personal preferences as to which one you like to use. But for easy collaborating, I definitely prefer Dropmark over Dropbox.

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