The virtual author visit

"What did you do at school today?".
"We chatted with an explorer about his four year cycle trip around the world".

One of the aspirations of a school which uses computers in the classroom is to enable students to engage with the world beyond the classroom. We would like our classes to be able to learn about the world from authentic engagement rather than simply getting their information from dry static sources.

Modern communication technology means that we don't only have to wait until exciting speakers come to school (though we have certainly had our share of these at ISL). Rather, we can invite the writer to our classroom via Skype or Google Hangout.

So it was that Hannah Flandrin-Jones' Grade 6 EAL class, who have been reading Alastair Humphrey's autobiographical The Boy Who Biked the World, got to chat with the author himself on Monday afternoon this week.

Using Hannah's Yoga laptop, her SmartBoard, a couple of cables and a pair of speakers, Alastair appeared right on time sitting in his writing shed. The students had prepared great questions and the technology connected them faultlessly with their hero. It was clear that they loved his book and had given a lot of thought to preparing their questions. The conversation was riveting and went back and forth for 40 minutes. Alastair encouraged them to read his other books and promised to return to discuss them virtually. He even gave the students a scoop about his next adventure to Spain in the footsteps of Laurie Lee, penniless and busking with a violin.

Last year we discussed the SAMR model which helps us to think about ways we can exploit the advantages of computers to give our students incomparable learning experiences. Hannah's students have had just such an experience: preparing for the conversation; meeting the artist in his place of work; and finally researching some of the ideas he gave them during their talk.

I am very grateful to Hannah and her class for giving me the opportunity to work on this project. It was easily set up and hugely rewarding to see the students get so much out of the exciting meeting.

The hardest part is finding the speaker, but in my experience, even well-known writers are often happy to Skype with your classroom. You can usually get through to them via their website. Just tell them your students are enjoying their work and could you have a chat? You've got nothing to lose! Then get in touch with Matt and me; we are very keen to help.

Make your own fruit salad

Dear colleagues of the Upper School,

Thank you very much for your positive reaction to the PD on Outlook on Wednesday.

I was very pleased that so many of you selected the fruit which suited your palate and assembled the salad which you felt you needed.

Many questions arose, naturally, and I shall answer some of them here:

Is there an expiry limit on Outlook email as in FirstClass?
No, the storage space available in Outlook makes deletion unnecessary.

Is there an email History function by which one can monitor who has opened a message?
Not like FC does it, but there are email tracking functions which require a degree of cooperation from the person being tracked. Go to File > Options > Mail, scroll down to Tracking. As you can see, there are options to request Read Receipts, but also to decline to respond to them.

If one sends a message one regrets, can it be unsent?
This function is called Recall and is imperfect in my experience. It is advisable carefully to read everything before you send, and I recommend  the following rule:

If in ANY doubt about a message, delete it and speak to the person face to face.

which has saved me from indiscretion on many occasions.
But accidents will happen.
In case of emergency, Google: recall message outlook 2013

Can I use the online version of Outlook?
Yes, that is possible and it will reproduce many of the functions of the computer program, but like all of the apps in Office 365, the online service is a reduced version.

What if I want to use an Apple computer?
Even though the school will supply to every US teacher an excellent Windows laptop, Mac devotees will be able to use their own machine if they desire and can replicate the standards required of the other teachers.
We are developing advice for our Mac users amongst the students and teachers. If you would like to contribute to this project, please contact Steve and attend the meeting in 008 on Monday 1 June at 12.00.

Why does my Outlook not look like the one in the video?
Some of you said you liked this bar at the bottom of Outlook, rather than the compact version. Or vice versa. See below.

Non-compact navigation

Compact Navigation

To make this change, go to View > Folder Pane > Options...

It's helpful to play with a number of other View options:

I like the calendar summary pane at the right of my mailbox which is achieved with the To-Do Bar option.

What about the second charger we are expecting?

These have been ordered and should be with every teacher who has a Yoga laptop by the start of next school year.

How will I connect my laptop to the projector in my classroom?
That will be the topic of my next blogpost.

Have a great weekend,

Steve

Great ideas from ECIS IT conference

A few days ago I returned from the IT conference of ECIS. There were many excellent presentations with ideas I shall follow up and I have brought back two particular suggestions which may interest ISL teachers.

Doctopus

Doctopus and Goobric
Here's how it works, all within Google Drive:

• you share an assignment with all of the students in a class.
• All of the students receive the instructions and the rubric in their Drive.
• Each student's work is automatically shared with the teacher.
• All the work for the assignment is organised in a single folder (no chasing of students to submit; it's already there).
• The teacher comments and grades on the student's document.
• The students receive the comments and grading (indicated on a copy of the rubric)
• The work can be graded more than once (eg for a draft and final copy)

The next time you give work to the same class, or use the same rubric again, it remembers all of the details.

Goobric

If I were to use Doctopus and Goobric, it would be for activities such as assessed essays, IB internal assessments, but also for any work which required feedback and simple organisation of all of its components. Great for teachers; great for students.

Doctopus and Goobric are so-called add-ons for Google Drive. If you would like to try them out to see if they could help you in your work, I am very eager to assist teachers to set them up. Please let me know if you have an upcoming student project and we can see how it works for you.

Kiva.org

My second suggestion, which is very different, is kiva.org. This is an innovative kind of aid organisation which gives micro-finance loans to projects around the world. The loans are crowd-funded in $25 units and 99% are paid back. After this, you can donate, re-invest or reclaim your money.

Kiva U is the educational arm of kiva.org through which your class or another student group can manage donations. You can use the website to research and choose your borrower. Once the money is lent, you can follow the progress of your borrower. There are also many opportunities to skype with people on the ground.

If you would like to discuss the possibilities for you and your class, please let me know. I have two coupons for 25 dollar loans which are already paid for and which an interested class could begin with, rather than risk their own money.

Leaked teacher lesson observation

The teacher was observed in his lesson and the following was noted:

• Relied on a piece of technology without testing it viz the wifi at the venue was not intended for 60 users;
• Required the students to use links which he had not supplied and emailed them during the lesson;
• Students learned lessons, but not necessarily the ones intended in the teacher's plan...

On the plus side, the presentation worked, there were sufficient activities which did not rely on the wifi and the students were engaged in very fruitful discussions. And it is a great space for meetings of that size, but not yet if they are 1 to 1.

Thank you for your support at the PD on Wednesday during which we learned that technology, like any plan, can go awry. My most helpful motto as ICT Facilitator is 'Never Assume' and I was caught out by technology's mean sense of humour. On the other hand, there was a Plan B and I joined some good conversations among teachers.

Stéphane took the non-virtual approach

I would be grateful if you could get together with subject colleagues, or alone, and try out the 2 activities in a more reliable wifi climate. Instructions are in the presentation above.

1. (Slide 4 etc) Re-design your room and share for comments with your colleagues (and me!). Thanks Stéphane (see pic).
2. (Slide 8 etc) Plan and teach a lesson by pairing a Learning Objective from Atlas with one of Juliani's 7 Good Ideas. And then invite me to the lesson so we can share your success.

In my work, there is nothing that delights me more than being invited by colleagues to help them plan a 1 to 1 activity, so please keep the requests coming.

Does Google know where you are? No? Are you sure?

In case I forget what I did last Wednesday, Google remembers

We don't always realise what we are agreeing to when we check boxes in our apps. If a web service asks you 'Remember your location?', don't expect it to forget a convenient time later. Google, to take an example, has something called Location History. It's not a secret, but nor do they advertise the fact like you might think.

If you have chosen to let Google know your location, and there all sorts of legitimate reasons, like finding your way using Google Earth or Maps, it will have kept that record. Have a look here.  If you have more than one login, check each one individually (my school Google doesn't track me, my personal one does, when I let it). In retrospect, you can think 'of course they know that' but it can come as an unwelcome reminder that the Net doesn't suffer from the amnesia we humans are prone to.

As the map above reveals, I was at school last Wednesday. At least, with my aging phone, they weren't spot-on with the precise location, but I can see when I visited Hillside or Lower School TO THE SECOND.

The good news is if you don't like it you can erase the past or switch it off into the future. The option is right there on the same page as the map and calendar (see left).

It is a matter of personal taste whether you like this or not. Google (or Apple, or your GPS) is only remembering what you have told it, after all. The important thing is to know what you are sharing and the consequences of keeping it or erasing this information.

The sound of Yoga

It seems that some, maybe most, of the Thinkpad laptops microphone options are wrongly set. Here is how to DIY it. Steve will help you if that's too intimidating, but you CAN do it.

Stage 1: Test if the microphone is correctly set up

1. Open the Sound Recorder by searching in the programs (Window key + S).
2. Record your voice.
3. Play it back.
4. If the recording is fine, you're done. The instructions below my still improve things though.
5. But if the recording is so hissy that you can barely understand what is said, there is a way to fix that.

Stage 2: Changing the microphone settings

1. Open up Control Panel (Window + S)
2. Sound
3. Click on Recording Tab
4. Click on the Microphone
5. Click Properties at the bottom right of the window
6. Click on Advanced
7. Select DVD quality recording from drop-down
8. Unselect Enable Audio Enhancements
9. Click Apply
10. Click OK
11. Try recording again with Sound Recorder or another option and see if it works

The Yoga is here

Thank you to all of the MS colleagues who came to collect their laptops and made it a festive occasion. I look forward to hearing what you like and don't like about it and how I can help you to learn more about your new device.

As we said at the meeting, the laptops have a basic set of programs which we expect most teachers will need. Other programs which are not needed by every teacher are available to install at the ISL Kiosk. This is a webpage from which you can install other programs as you wish. The link is only available in school at the moment because of the licenses. The link is the long line of green text below which you can paste into your browser (you can only access this when you are on the school network).
file:///N:/AS%20Faculty/IT_Support/Software_Kiosk/Software_Kiosk.html

Please let Jason know if there are programs which you would like to have be able toinstall on the laptop via the Kiosk. You are the administrator of your machine and so can install programs from other sources too. But, of course, we are allowed only to install programs which we are legally entitled to (no pirates and only free or paid software for which you have the licence).




The slideshow at the top of the post will grow to become a Yoga Thinkpad self-training module. For now, you could try the quiz on slide 6, as have a couple of colleagues  (I am the only one to score 100% up to this point and that was on my second attempt even though I wrote it).

Testmoz is one of several online tools (no login required) where you can very easily design tests which self-mark (or get the class to make tests for each other while revising?).


I am grateful for the patience of the rest of the staff who are yet to get their laptop (August is not too far away!).


Thank you to Gilbert for dealing with the first annoying issue which has come up. If you are being bugged by the Switch between apps notification, there are ways to remove it temporarily or permanently described here.