More #ISLconnects workshops after Easter

We have now offered 5 different workshops and are very grateful for your support in signing up for them. We are all lucky that Nancy has arranged for subs to be found for teachers who have classes at the appointed times. The most recent workshops were:

• Digital Pics and Flicks
• Search Me!
• Noodletools 101

More than 20 colleagues attended these three. We have had 48 attendees for our whole series. Many fed back that they learned a lot and had time to apply their new skills in the workshops. They would pass on the message to others.

So after Easter, we will be offering the same three workshops again on various Tuesdays, period 3:

Tues 2 May, Period 3 - Digital Pics and Flicks, presented by Becky Burnett
Sources for digital images and creating your own pics and movies with Adobe Spark.
Signup: bit.ly/picsflickssignup

Tues 9 May, Period 3 - Search Me, presented by Steve Weatherell
Techniques to teach your students how to use Google search effectively for research projects. Come away with some free posters for your classroom!
Signup: bit.ly/searchmesignup

Tues 16 May, Period 3 - NoodleTools 101, presented by Marion van Engelen
How to use this tool to help your students with their research projects, organise information and thoughts on a topic, and cite their sources in MLA 8 format, at a level suitable to them. Excellent for use with the IBDP Extended Esay!
Signup: bit.ly/noodletoolssignup

Emailing your classes from the LMS

When I want to contact the students in my classes  or their parents, I use the LMS. I'm not sure all of our colleagues are aware of this function within Final Site which I find easier than INSIS. The instructions are below in the slideshow with a summary on the final slide.

More #ISLconnects workshops dates!

Teachers at the #ISLconnects workshop

It's hard to know when you are going to find the time to learn about all those shiny tech tools people keep talking about. The time is now!

We are delighted that the school is providing cover for teachers who sign up for the new series of #ISLconnects PD workshops. Last Tuesday, the first group of colleagues joined Steve for "Cloud documents in the classroom". We will conclude this week.

On Thursday this week, Becky will teach the first "Collaboration and Thinking Routines" workshop. It is already fully subscribed!

For those who missed them but would like to join us, we will be repeating the same workshops before the February half-term. Please sign up for any workshop that interests you and at the same time put in your application for a substitute through Cascade (mentioning #ISLconnects in the 'additional information').

Below are the new dates in the programme:

Workshop	Date(s)
Using cloud documents with your students - Research, Create, Share, Collaborate (2 sessions)	Tues 7 Feb, D day, p3 (1045-1145) and Tues 14 Feb, B day, p3 (1045-1145)	Sign up here
Collaboration and Thinking Routines Online - Padlets, Digital Whiteboards and more (1 session)	Thur 9 Feb, G day, p3 (1045-1145)	Sign up here

Using cloud documents (Two 1 hour sessions - you should attend both)There are many reasons to learn the skills of using Google Drive etc. These include: no more heavy attachments nor multiple versions of the same resource; embeddable in the LMS; contain multimedia resources; exist in many formats including Microsoft; great for student group-work. Learn these skills and more (based on Steve's 'Power and the Point' presentation).

Collaboration and thinking routines (1 hour session)Promoting collaboration online with organized activities using digital whiteboards and Padlet. We will use specific backgrounds to sort ideas, and even learn to create unique backgrounds to utilise in these tools.

If your team is interested in inviting us to deliver one of the workshops during your collaboration time, please get in touch and we will be glad to oblige.

The workshops we are offering were inspired by the consultation about effective lessons at the staff meeting of 30th November 2016 at which 'collaboration' was identified as a key feature. We have many ideas for other workshops, including Digital Literacy and Digital Projects; The Flipped Classroom and Top Tools for Curation and Creation, with yet more to follow. We are happy to prepare other topics on request.

Reflecting with the Middle School

Many of us like our students to reflect on the way they learn. It would be even more powerful if the reflections they do in different classes were all collected together in one place. We can do this now! It's often referred to as an e-portfolio.

Building on a great initiative from our Music, Theatre and Visual Arts colleagues, now all MS students have a blog in which they can write; make links; post images; embed audio or video. They then label the blogpost with the name of the subject and the blog will create a tab which collects all of their posts from just that subject.

For the students, it can be a very helpful tool for improving their learning skills. As we work to find a better LMS (which would hopefully include this sort of portfolio), we are keen that the skills the students are learning while blogging will be transferred to the new system (and the blogposts too).

If you would like to learn how to use this tool with your MS classes, please let Steve or Becky know and we will be happy to show you and visit your class to help you implement it.

Here is a short video showing how it works.

Sharing is caring

Dear all,

I enjoyed meeting my colleagues during the meetings on Wednesday. We were talking about a great way to share resources with classes: organising them in Google Drive, but accessible through the LMS. Here are the slides explaining how to use a Google Drive folder to share documents with students via the LMS.

Also, I mentioned in one session that it is possible to edit one's MS Word and Powerpoint files within Google Drive so that there is no more upload and replace file misery. I have now tried this out and it works though the edits are only simple; you can't edit images for example. If you want to investigate this, watch this video:

I am happy to walk you through this if you want; at first it seemed not to work, but it does and it's fine.

Steve

How will ICT at ISL look next year?

Dear colleagues,

The landscape of educational technology at ISL continues, as ever, to develop. Most systems will be the same at the start of the next year, but here is a short summary of some changes:

1 to World is a Thing

We are used to the term '1 to 1' which describes each student in a classroom having her own computer. Next year, you will increasingly hear the term '1 to World' which reflects the ability of a student using a computer to connect with resources and people beyond their classroom.

1 to World in Upper School
Upper School students from Grades 6 to 11 will be bringing a laptop to school every day. Grade 12 students will be encouraged to do so, but it is optional for them. Here is a copy of the letter which went to families summarising the situation with 1 to 1.

Increasing ICT integration in Upper School
ICT integration at ISL will continue to work closely with individual colleagues on their projects, but there will be a greater emphasis on integrating ICT into the schemes of teaching teams so that the student experience is more uniform. We are developing an 'Educational Technology Skillset' which will identify abilities we would like all students to have acquired when they leave Grade 8 and that teachers of older year groups can assume their students have. This is a work in progress. To achieve this goal, the ICT facilitators have met with a number of teaching teams (both Middle School and subject groups) to discuss projects we can co-develop from the planning stages to co-teaching in the classroom and we will continue to work on this from the start of next school year.

ICT in Action
As a consequence of the increased focus on integration of ICT into curriculum planning, the course of ICT in Action, which has been a feature in the Middle School Cascade programme, will be phased out. The skills which students learned in these standalone classes will be taught instead through the medium of regular classrooms in a closer alliance between teachers and the facilitators. The students joining Grade 6 will get up to speed with the basic skillset in a six lesson programme during the first 2 weeks of school called Get Set.

New ICT Facilitator
... and finally, we will have a new facilitator in Upper School from the start of next school year. Becky Burnett is joining us and I know you will make her very welcome. This means, sadly, that we are saying 'Sayonara' to Matt. I know many of you will miss his cheerful expertise and I am very sorry to see a great colleague leave us.

Your data in the Final Site LMS at the end of the school year

Dear all,

With the end of the academic year approaching, we’d like to make sure you are aware of what will happen with your information in the Final Site LMS during the vacation.

You do not need to do anything now. Nothing will be lost. All importing into new classes will take place at the beginning of the 2016 -17 academic year. Your Technology Facilitators will be here to support you in this process.

All of your current classes will be archived (this means they are saved in a place where you can find them easily) during the vacation. All resources, all media,, all bulletins currently in the LMS will be saved. In August, the LMS will be ready for development for your new classes. You will be able to import the archived data into your new classes. Data which cannot be imported is anything which has a specific date such as calendar events and Dropbox deadlines (although they will have been saved for reference).

Below is the menu bar of a typical class page. See below for details about the data behind each button.

Home: With just a few clicks, this page can be copied from an archived class to a new class.

Calendar: Events in your calendar must be created again for the next academic year.

Gradebook & Attendance: Not used at ISL … no worries.

Resources: With just a few clicks, resource folders and files can be copied from an archived class to a new class.

DropBox: Tasks in your DropBox must be created again for the next academic year.

Media: Is anyone using this?

Bulletins: Bulletins must be created again for the new academic year.

Blog: Blog posts must be created again for the new academic year, but you can copy and paste information from an archived class.

Discussions: Discussion boards can be imported from an archived class.

Members: This information is imported directly from INSIS.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

Steve and Matt