Webb's Wide World

A germ of an idea can sometimes just grow.  What I wrote about handheld assessment – an app for APP – in an earlier blog post started with my head teacher and I standing in the corridor discussing the use of ipods that I’d seen at BETT.  “What we need is……”, “Yes, and it needs to…..”, “and then it should….”  But a complete lack of experience and knowledge  of how to make it all happen started the journey that you read about before. And now I am sat on a train on the way to London to go to a Futurelab seminar about New Assessment Scenarios! I always find myself getting excited about adventures like this – just going on a train to London for the day is an adventure in itself, not to mention all the new people to meet and ideas to absorb. More reflections about the day to follow soon…. 

I’m not quite sure what the day has in store. I have a very open mind.  I want to learn more about how technology can be used to support assessment – not the stuff that gives us numbers and all the boring stuff (sorry to all those of you who deal with that data on a daily basis and find it useful for comparisons etc.) No, I want to see how we can use technology to effectively assess as we are going along so we can tweak what we are doing with children in our classes. Diagnostic assessment – for example, if I do a maths assessment  with my class I get a total, which then generates a level. Great for those data tables – but it doesn’t really help with what I do in class. Someone with a 3b may be able to order decimals on a number line but someone else with a 3b can’t!  So – and this may sound incredibly long-winded – I end up with an excel spreadsheet and a question-by-question analysis.

At the bottom of each column I add a simple AVG function and use the data to generate a visual representation of the information to help me:

Then those questions that are high up are the learning objectives that most of the class are secure with, those that are low down are the ones we need to revisit as a whole class, those that are in the middle are the ones I need to set as targets for groups of pupils who can then be identified from looking at the list above. That’s what I mean by diagnostic testing – identifying the next steps that are going to help move a child’s learning forward. I just find it easier to figure out what to do next when I have something that is visual to interpret! 

This kind of data analysis has its place, but some children don’t “perform” well in exams. I always think of performing seals when I hear that phrase. We all have good days and bad days. I’m fortunate enough to be someone who always quite enjoyed exams, prepared well for them and achieved decent enough results to help me to get O levels (showing my age now!), A levels, degree….  But I know others who aren’t. I particularly like the new scheme we’ve just introduced into school for maths – Abacus Evolve. There’s an online i-planner – which is easy enough to use – and I can also use the online tool to record who has/hasn’t achieved the lesson objective, who was absent and add any comments/notes to myself for the next lesson – but sometimes it’s good to have those notes to refer to next time the objective comes up. I’ve done this in the past on paper – but this is reliant on my memory (which is not always reliable) and being able to put my hands quickly on the note that is going to help me when the objective comes up again. What I like about the i-planner is that when I next come to the same objective, the planning  automatically shows the information about which pupils didn’t quite grasp the concept last time, along with any commentary I may have added. I REALLY believe this is going to be valuable (I’ve trialled it during the last half term).

The other tool that I think has much potential is the app for APP – it may just be APP at the moment, but I think this would be particularly useful for Foundation Stage once those objectives are added. I think there’s also the potential for us to change those objectives if/when the government move the goal posts (objectives/levels wise) or for using in a range of other subjects as a way to record what we are doing. I know that is possible with other tools, too, but I think what is different about this is that it is a tool for collecting data AND analysing diagnostically to identify next steps AND using it to generate the tables of data that we inevitably have to produce as milestones in a child’s learning journey.  More to follow about this soon….

Assessment was one of those areas that I felt very insecure about as a PGCE student – I know that some things never change as students who have been placed with me have confirmed this! I also know that assessment fills both pupils and teachers with dread at times and can seem like a beaurocratic tool. It’s not something that we generally get excited about – but I think the technology is here to enable us to join up assessment and learning – so we effectively assess what is REALLY being learnt, so we effectively use our assessments to diagnose gaps in knowledge/skills/understanding, so we make it easier/more relevant for staff and pupils.

Yes, I am excited about assessment, something I never, ever thought I would be saying! 

I think we have the technology now available to revolutionise how we use it so it’s an effective experience for our pupils, so it’s less stressful for both pupils and teachers, so that the results of that assessment can effectivley inform planning, so that we spend less time assessing and more time teaching (and with added effectiveness).

This is an interesting tool to check out – showing the bios of twitter follows in the form of a word cloud!

I just looove visual representations!

We had a fantastic opportunity to look at other cultures during our theme week this year. I decided to give the children a choice when it came to the song for our school concert – a song from Brazil or one from Cuba. El Cumbanchero from Cuba was chosen by the class and so we needed to find out a little more about Cuba! The children made posters to show some of their findings and also wrote some poems to describe their ideas about Cuba. Well done to those pupils who spent some time converting the word/publisher files into pdf files so they could be easily added to a myebook, which we were then able to embed in the learning platform to share with their parents.

This is such a simple tool to use – what an attractive way to share pupil work and with a much wider audience than a paper version in class would have let us.

The background images for the poems were prepared by the pupils using Wordle.

We had a bit of a fraught time with out internet connections during the last term of 2009-2010.  It threatened the collaboration that the class were doing with @henriettaMi’s class in Sydney, Australia.  But where there’s a will, there’s a way!!!! And what is more, the collaborative project we did with our voicethreads has made it to the Sydney Morning Herald! WOW – how amazing is it to have our school and our work shared all the way across the world!

We were using the class rainforest wiki to share our artwork – but that proved difficult given the slow internet speed. Fortunately however, there’s always a plan B, C, D, etc when using web 2.0 technology and Ms Miller’s class used voicethread to share their aboriginal style artwork, using the comment tools to share the thinking that had gone into the work.  Our pupils were then able to add their own comments – they were just so in awe, that two stars and a wish comments were mostly two stars and no wishes!

In turn, we published our own voicethread with our own aboriginal style artwork.  I was able to use the voicethread to give my own feedback to pupils – I can see that the potential of voicethread as a formative/assessment for learning tool is going to be huge. And when I say huge, I probably should say *****HUGE!!!!!***** We’d already tried voicethread for MFL and literacy purposes, I’d thought about the maths potential of using for sharing strategies – but now we have assessment tools that can support our diagnosis of learning gaps, support our feedback, support self/peer feedback, support collaborative feedback/assessment with others across a range of subjects – I have to say, I had never thought about using it for art before!!!

I just hope the kids never lose that excitement about sharing their work with others who live across the other side of the world.

Imagine the scene. 13 pupils about to arrive from 4 different schools in the local area. Kids who are gifted and talented with ict (what can one old fogey like me possibly teach them!). A sinking feeling – nowhere to put them!!!!!  Liaising with teachers and teaching assistants so I could use the (very, very) small group room – the room that is designed for groups of 6 or so.  Two small tables, 7 chairs. Boxes of books, folders, files in every part of the room that wasn’t occupied by children. By the time these pupils had arrived, I had done the equivalent of a workout at the gym and the room was just ready for the children – no space to move around and very cosy, as you can see from the picture!!!

But it worked! The aim of the day was to show the children a wide range of tools – web 2.0 tools – so that by the afternoon they could make a presentation of some sort for teachers to show how ict helps us learn throughout the curriculum. We talked about how we learn from other people, how our ideas grow when we bounce them off each other, how ict can help us to do that with an even larger audience. And what tools did we use?

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

We had two wallwishers (embedded into our learning platform, as all the children were familiar with the same type of learning platform). On one they put their own ideas about how ict can help us to learn and on the other they put what they wanted to learn to use during the day.  We talked about how wikis can be used, we looked at voicethread, mindmaps and then they tried out xtranormal. I’ve written about using wikis and voicethread in previous blog posts and talked about them but I hadn’t actually used xtranormal with a class before, only for my own use (you can see my attempts in an earlier blog post). It’s a great tool for being able to create animations.  You simply type in the script for the characters you’ve selected, then add some directions for camera angles and gestures for the characters to make. What a great way to re-tell a story, or put information across to others.  I can see such potential for pupils sharing what they have learnt with others – even for us to assess the extent of their knowledge! (@gvibes introduced me to xtranormal at her teachmeet presentation at BETT 2010 and I’ve been itching to try it out with the children ever since!) Best of all it was fun to use. When they were asked how they wanted to present their ideas to other teachers about how to learn, there was a clear winner in the preferred tool race – it caught their imagination.

Unfortunately we had some hitches – I had set up a single account for the group and with everyone trying to use it at the same time, it wouldn’t let them save their work to come back to after lunch After several e-mails and some lateral thinking at lunchtime, we decided it would be best to use voicethread for the afternoon, even if it meant taking some screenshots of our animations to use in our voicethread – so we learnt a whole load of extra skills and problem solving! They learnt to print screen, paste into another application like publisher or powerpoint so they could crop, save the picture, then upload into voicethread for their presentation.  They used both voice recordings and typed commentaries around their pictures -  very productive afternoon was had by all.  The ways in which the pupils developed the ideas were very interesting and different. The voicethreads were then embedded into their own areas on the learning platform, ready for sharing with their own schools. Watch the film below to get a flavour of what the children did.

P.S. I know xtranormal has an age restriction – we talked about e-safety issues and they used my account under very close supervision – what I’d love to see is this developing into a tool that could be safely used in a primary context, as it has so much potential for learning, for sharing work and ideas, for afl (assessment for learning).

It’s been an incredibly busy month here – as is quite usual for all teachers at the end of the academic year, with assessments, report writing, transitional information sharing etc.  And amongst it all, there’s been lots of family stuff going on, I’ve drafted another assignment for my Masters in Education module that I’m currently working through, I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited 3 different schools to deliver learning platform training, I’ve been in close touch with Geoff the Giant and Amir as I’ve been trialling e-track (our handheld learning assessment tool), embarked on an Exploring Leadership course and have been trying to complete all the Becta self review framework sections in readiness for ICT mark assessment (which must happen before October 31st if I don’t want to re-adjust all the work done so far to fit the new self review framework). I’m not going to GTAUK (see my previous blog post for information about my application for that) but also applied (and was accepted) on an e-twinning workshop for a few days in September – in Gdansk – which I’m really excited about because it will help build some lasting international links for our school! oh, and will be going to Futurelab at the end of July for a day, as well as meeting up with others to plan the forthcoming Teachmeet we have arranged at Stoke on Trent Sixth Form College – OCTOBER 19th – TMX – put the date in your diary! And of course the amazing #ukedchat has started, which is something else deserving of a blog post all of its own!

SO MANY different blog posts to look forward to writing (so little time!). But I’m aware that a lot of those different things that are going on are on the periphery of the REAL crux of the matter – the learning that is going on in class, though they help to make the learning better in the long term. All those other things – collaborating with other teachers, sorting out assessments/reports, building international links, developing a useful tool for assessment – aren’t just about making our lives easier as teachers – they’re about establishing sound learning experiences for our pupils. And I had a fantastic day with some pupils at the beginning of July that I have been bursting to blog about for ages! So watch out for the G&T post (and I don’t mean gin and tonic!). As well as that, we have had some amazing learning going on as a result of our collaboration with @henriettami’s class – mainly via voicethread after we had some technical hitches/slow internet access causing problems at our end….another experience in our class that I’m bursting to tell you all about.

However, both those learning posts will have to wait while I do some preparation for the last week of term that is still ahead of me – apologies to anyone who may have been wondering why the blog has been so quiet lately, but be prepared for LOTS of blog posts coming up soon!

I’m a relative newcomer to using Google for things other than a search engine – though I thought I was ahead of the game using tools like google scholar, google books and advanced search techniques!   I only even heard about Google docs about six months ago! But it quickly became apparent to me that they have a huge potential to support collaborative working and collaborative learning.  So when I heard through Twitter about Google Teacher Academies and Google Educators, I was surprised to find they were only in the US. And then I heard about a campaign from @tombarrett to bring the academies to the UK – what a fantastic opportunity to learn more, to share more, to make the most of the tools that are out there for us educators to use! And then came the opportunity to apply – right in the middle of report writing, half term, being a taxi driver/chef/jack-of-all-trades mum and all the other exciting stuff going on at school and at home! How was I ever going to squeeze it in?!?!?! There was an online application form to complete and a one minute video to make.

So I set myself a time limit.  It meant that the video I made is still quite raw, because I didn’t spend the time polishing that I might otherwise have done.  It might not be a brilliant application form. But if you don’t try, you don’t get anywhere – and this is an amazing opportunity to be one of 50 European Educators finding ways of effectively using the tools, sharing them with colleagues and supporting others – a collaborative learning journey! And, let’s face it, with the number of other worthy people who will be applying there’s a very good chance of me not joining them in London at the end of July.

So why bother? I think we have a wealth of untapped resources out there - there is a great twitterati using a wealth of web 2.0 tools   but there are so many more that I just don’t know about or just don’t use to their full potential.  And if it will help the learning going on in my class, or help the learning of my colleagues, or simply make life simpler and more joined up – then how can I not bother?

And the video? Making a one minute video takes MUCH more than one minute! This is how I did mine – I used xtranormal and managed to save the video – unfortunately my rough draft was the only one I managed to save, as when I went back the next day to make a more polished, more considered film, I was unable to download any videos! I subsequently found out that this facility had been removed from free accounts over half term – I obviously just got the first video downloaded before it became impossible, so used what I had, put it in moviemaker to edit it and add some screenshots of a wiki project and added a voiceover.  Some of the frames with writing should have lasted longer – I cut them a bit too much to fit the one minute time limit – so this is what I ended up with – not the world’s greatest film, but a great learning experience in itself and I can already see some uses for film making in this way with my class!

I had a grand day out to the seaside this week – a trip to Blackpool Teachmeet at Hawes Side Primary school, organised by the very capable, enthusiastic and hospitable Jim Maloney and Tom Sales.  It was brilliant to meet tweeps in the flesh who inspire me on a daily basis – much humour to be had in the company of @Joga5, @dughall and @Ideas_Factory and many others, too.

Also, much humour after the event as friends, family, colleagues and pupils got so excited and wanted to see my ipad! Thanks very much to @chrisrat for that goody bag treat.  I ended up with a huge crowd of year 6′s all wanting to talk to me when I was on playground duty the next day!

The rock I took back proved a huge incentive for my class and led to some very competitive problem solving on Friday – I use a book called Groups Work from time to time with them and this time each of the teams were competing for the prize of rock! Whilst competitiveness is not my motivational tool of choice, every now and then it’s not so bad - this time it had a real impact on the cooperation going on within groups!

There are some immensely talented and amazing teachers out there who always seem to come up with some new ideas for us to try out in class -

• @stephenheppell showing the time button in google earth – it’s possible to see what a city like Berlin looked like in the past, simply by using a slider bar; using translate tools we can read any page on the internet, whatever language it is written in; Mapumental – looks like something to keep an eye out for when it is released in the future – it’s a visual representation of databases which could even be used by parents to search for the information THEY think is important e.g. how many teachers send their own children to a school!
• @bevevans22 had some really neat ideas about using powerpoint for stopframe animation
• @zoeross talked about guilty pleasures – not the cake at the back, but using tools like moviemaker and photostory for effective learning – Rickrolling and Colin were just delightful additions to really sound applications for the classroom
• @Joga told us about the awesome work being done by @GiraffeClass – the jokes they learnt/told/shared via twitter were truly amazing when you consider the play on language that is involved in them for year 1 children (well worth following the class on twitter!)
• @ianaddison talking from a distance about using Voki – he’s also set up a map so you can see where all the teachmeet twitterers are!
• @simonhaughton demonstrated a huge range of uses of purplemash in the classroom – I REALLY must explore the datahandling tools in more detail after having seen what he did with them – we’ve used the animation tool very successfully so far, and can recommend that to anyone!
• award-winning @iamclairei showed how she has been using games as a stimulus to writing – in particular with Machinarium
• @colport talked about the fantastic myebook site – it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t already done so – he used it very powerfully with his class to publish scanned copies of their work (my PGCE student used it earlier in the year for a science information book and we are using it this term for a poetry book).
• There were online timelines via a link
• @SpanishSam showed the power of wordle for MFL or for any sort of topic teaching – perhaps at the start of a topic to show the keypoints or as a review at the end of the topic
• @misterjim (one of our fabulous comperes!) showed us poissonrouge - a really interesting site especially for FS/KS1 that enables lots of problem solving and self directed study
• @jacksloan talked about the power of blogging for connecting children with the wider world
• @Ideas_Factory suggested that resistance to change is written in our dna and used animal analogies to describe how different people respond to change
• @primarypete_ showed his use of voicethread as a tool for moderating writing  and storybird - another amazing online tool for using in class – I’d thoroughly recommend voicethread from my own experiences, too (we’re currently using it to collaborate with a class in Australia) but have only briefly looked at storybird, so want to have a closer look at that in the future.
• @mynictle gave such a clear way of understanding the different terminology for non-musicians and there was definitely some competition going on between the salt and vinegar/cheese and onion lovers!
• A great project was shown by a Blackpool high school who are using learning “bases” to provide some of the continuity and cross curricular apporaches  that children at that transition stage benefit from

I’m sure I’ve missed out loads of ideas that were shared, but it was great to see tools that I love being demonstrated, some different uses for those tools and some ideas for new tools and ways of using tools.  It was only my second teachmeet – it certainly won’t be my last.  If you don’t get an opportunity to go to a teachmeet, check out @eyebeams who videos the events and will be adding to his archive.   I wonder if TeachmeetCheshire could work?!?!

P.S. if you want to try out any of the tools – or have any others to share, join in the wiki for apps4class – just look at the index if you are looking for a particular tool, or look at the subject areas for some ideas – please join and add!  And if you want to chat to other UK teachers in an #edchat style, the new #ukedchat starts on Thursdays at 8pm on twitter – check out the wiki for more information.

My previous post was about how children have very flexible boundaries when playing football – they know how to play by the rules, but when they are playing on their own terms the rules change, just like learning can successfully take place within boundaries but also takes place beyond the boundaries we apply as teachers.

So how do we teach children who are blurring the learning boundaries? Like sheepdog trials.  Think of yourself as a shepherd, guiding the children from learning point A to learning point B (the desired learning outcomes).

More traditional styles of teaching are a bit like the shepherd guiding the sheep down a wide corridor – the width of which depends on the teacher.  Corridors have doors leading off them and perhaps our more nosey sheep may push a door or two open to explore something different (it takes a strong push to do that).  Some teachers may even open up those doors that lead off the corridor and encourage a few sheep – or more – through them, as they go off at a bit of a tangent to the prescribed curriculum. 

But perhaps we need to re-think our “restricted” corridor, no matter how many side-doors we think we are opening for our students.

Perhaps we need to think about teaching in a field instead.  Sheepdog trials will probably give us a clearer image of how we need to be teaching these children who blur the boundaries. A shepherd in a sheepdog trial stands at a distance from the sheep and the dogs.  He uses a whistle to guide the dogs so they, in turn, guide the sheep.  Subtle little instructions that enable there to be some sense of purpose and direction.  Just like the questions we use to direct, extend, enhance our pupils’ learning.  There’s no doors off the corridor this time, but the whole field is available for the sheep to run around! Perhaps in the same way we can use technology, the internet, a whole host of other tools, so that our pupils can explore their own questions and ideas.  But just like the sheep, there needs to be some fine tuning to make sure they get to the final destination, the second pen, point B. And that’s a different skill to directing them down the corridor.

I’m not the world’s greatest football fan, I admit (soccer for those of you who aren’t based in the UK).  But coming from a city like Liverpool, with two amazing football teams, it’s not possible to avoid completely.  And it’s definitely not possible to avoid when there is so much fantastic football going on in school and the World Cup is about to start.

We had a great few weeks before half term, with an inter-house football tournament taking place each Friday – years 3 and 4 with one competition and years 5 and 6 with another.  All credit to my colleagues who managed to figure out who would need to play whom, in order that there would be a fair competition for all the teams.  There was some amazing teamwork taking place. Our year 3 and 4 children knew the boundaries, stuck to them, followed the decisions of the year 5/6 referees.  They were teamplayers, encouraging each other. They knew, when the ball went over the boundary, whose turn it would be to take the throw in, the corner, the free kick. They knew the rules.  They stuck to the rules.  They had fun within the boundaries of what they were doing.

Then I was on duty one morning.  And the football was an altogether different matter.  Still great team playing. Actually, loads more children getting a touch of the ball.  The teams didn’t comprise of a set number.  They varied in size and skill.  There was no referee to blow the whistle, make the decisions – the children who were playing had an unspoken set of rules that varied ever-so-subtly from the rules that were in place for the formal tournament.  They negotiated, they agreed, they let some things go in order that the game could continue, so the pace was not broken too much.  The boundaries weren’t there – when the ball went over the “lines”, they carried on following it – right into the pitch where the other year groups were playing – so that sometimes I’d see two games of football taking place within metres of each other! It was much more reminiscent of the games of football that are played between villages across fields, between the streets in the city (as my Dad described to me, when he was growing up in the middle of Liverpool just after the war).  The rules had become more fluid.  To see up to 50 children – boys, girls, year 3, year 4 – playing one game of football on one small pitch was one thing – to see over 80 playing in such close proximity, you’d be expecting there to be some falling out, injuries, for me to be called upon as the adult on duty.  But that didn’t happen.  And it wasn’t just one playground duty that I saw them sorting themselves out, but several! Wow! I know that doesn’t always happen at school playtimes – and I consider it a huge privilege to have been able to witness this. Brings a lump to your throat to see this!

I couldn’t help but wonder how many times we place our boundaries on what our children are doing in their lessons.  And what happens when we remove those boundaries – do we underestimate the power of our children to take responsibility for their own learning? For collaboration? How many times do we restrict the boundaries of their learning instead of letting them just run with it, to just “follow that ball”, to follow that train of thought, investigation? What are the constraints of our context? Do we underestimate our pupils’ ability to encourage, support, provide quality feedback, accept feedback? Perhaps sometimes by standing back, we can become more effective facilitators for learning? Ok, in the football context, me being there on duty was just the safety net – I suppose the children knew that if anything went wrong they could refer to me - sometimes we just have to be the spectator on the sidelines and the skill as a teacher is to know when to be a spectator, when to be a facilitator, when to be the first aider, when to be the referee. And the football was still fun within the context of a formal competition with formal rules – children are eminently adaptable to shifting boundaries – just like successful learning can take place within structures, within boundaries.  Technology may empower our children to take greater control over their learning, but they will still need a teacher there to encourage, facilitate, guide, support problem solving, support the development of the social/communication skills that our children need to collaborate effectively, to ask the questions that will provoke them into moving their learning forward.  What boundaries do we need? Which are the ones we can be more flexible with? Which are the ones we should remove?

What do you think?