Wednesday 24 June 2015

Hi all.  Thank you for a nice, civilised day today.  It was a refreshing change from my usual working day.
I was asked to put up a blog post about the app and web site that we discussed earlier.

When I went to look for Soundslate, I noticed that they have now updated it and it is called Audioboard.  I thought that I'd better review it first, so I downloaded it and it appears to work in the same way as the old app.  If you are using audio, it allows you to cue your music/ sound effects etc. and they can be played with the tap of a finger.  It really is a good app.  Combine it with Hokusai or GarageBand and you can edit your sound files or get the students to record their own.  It can enhance the children's work and you can pre-record audio questions or prompts for a fun activity.  Naturally, it comes into it's own during s live performance/ assembly.

Audioboard

What do the students think?

Students from Lewis Girls Media class have undertaken some research and created a Videoscribe of their findings. Student Opinion - Videoscribe

Tuesday 23 June 2015

Tracking Teenagers

How do you feel about tracking teenagers? Tracking Teenage Drivers - BBC

June update

Just been weaving digital elements into the whole school development plan. I'll be looking to widen the digital champions to encompass KS3 pupils. This is really encouraging as it shifts a six month trial into a three year plan that builds in a welcome sense of sustainability in a field that always seems to fail to grasp the coat tails of such rapid change and development.

I've really come to appreciate the need to balance innovation and creativity alongside safety and responsible use of technology. This has been one of the greatest benefits to come from this project - working at subtly shifting a slightly risk averse culture towards giving people the courage and support to try things out. We now have half a dozen school Twitter accounts running successfully, leading to improved CPD and further improved communication. From Maths to the Welsh Ethos, pupils and staff are benefitting. It was especially pleasing to see our recent Brazilian Global Partnership being developed through Twitter and Skype. Less, perhaps, because of the technologies being used but more due to the way staff are feeling free to 'have a go'.

Really looking forward to catching up with the digital leaders tomorrow, especially if we can start getting to grips with Digital Competency.
Hwyl

What have I been doing with my time?

I'm sorry that this blog post is late.  Like many people, we have been having a nightmare of a time with ICT in school thanks to county-wide problems.  As a result, I have spent the majority of this week either trying to get onto the Internet, troubleshooting ICT problems or trying to think of work-arounds.  

I haven't been anything like as industrious as many of you.  I have virtually abandoned the Staff Blog (my original idea) as I was the only person posting and there was no audience for it. Having said that, I attended an on-line BTEC Firsts course yesterday that suggested that student blogs (individual and collaborative) was the way to go when evidencing process in my subject area.  I may have to revisit the idea of a class blog.

We held a Digital Safety evening where we invited the students to present and the parents to attend.  The focus of the evening was celebrating opportunity whilst recognising potential pitfalls.  The students (YR 9 and Cybermentors) wanted to have the chance to reassure parents and answer any of their questions.  Kate Jowett our PSE coordinator talked about Cybermentoring and the support that pupils could expect to experience in school; PC Winfield talked about the law and the Internet; one student talked about the connection between cyber bullying and teenage mental health and I reflected on the changes that have happened and are about to happen with regards to ICT in school.  I also supplied the cakes! The turn-out wasn't great - I think that the staff and pupils outnumbered the parents - but those who did attend had strong opinions.  Some parents were very concerned about what their children were doing on-line; one mother not only checked her daughter's computer usage, checked her phone and tracked her physical whereabouts using her daughter's phone's GPS, but also got her two grown-up sons to do the same. 

We have been trying to introduce student e-mails via HWB+, but have encountered many problems.  My admin status was removed - the only person who had admin privileges was a cookery teacher whose name is first on the alphabetic list.  We had to have all of the passwords reset when I accidentally broke the Data Protection Act. We were unable to see the usernames and details of the duel-entered students; when we were given the details, they didn't work.  I can't send e-mails to students registered in Rhymney even though I teach them - I have been blocked by their host school admin.  Our idea, once things are up and running, is to integrate all of our current systems, Moodle, HWB +, Gmail, Office 365, Dropbox, iPads, Android tablets etc. to provide a blended and adaptable systems to serve/ enhance teaching and learning within the school.  I have written Staff/ student/ parent guidelines to support the introduction of student e-mail.

We have been revising our personal mobile devices policies.  From September, students will be allowed to use their own phones and tablets at certain times in school.  There is some opposition from staff and parents about this, but it has been decided that in the interests of progression this needs to be done.  Use will be at the discretion of the individual teacher and we will not be going down the full Bring Your Own Device route.

I have been stealth training (on a needs basis) to increase the skills of teaching and support staff. Areas covered included Excel, Class OneNote (on-line and desktop), Office 365, QR codes, IDoceo, Socrative, Explain Everything, template creation in Word and Excel, e-mail, using iPads to support learning, iPads for support staff, video editing using IMovies (Mac and iPad) and introduction to Lenovo tablets.  I have been asked by the Science department to provide an inset on getting the most from a VLE.

Sadly, there has been no progress made regarding updating our current Moodle site.

Progress so far - Learners Professional Online Presence

I’ve been exceptionally busy since we last met so have integrated my digital leaders ideas into the new A levels that I’m teaching. The work I had done at KS3 I presented previously I had closed for now, earmarked for further development an integration into the KS3 SOW.

I’ve been further developing video screen casts and resources on my website (www.mrbotfieldict.co.uk) as well as maintaining my YouTube Channel www.youtube.com/mrbotfieldict

The discussion we had about teachers being good digital role models, plus more recent media coverage lead me to look how I could integrate being a good digital role model, directly with my classes.

From discussing social network use with learners across KS4 and 5 it appears that the channel they use less for personal use is Twitter – thus making it the ideal platform for them to launch and maintain their own professional profiles.

From speaking to some contacts who are recruitment consultants I’ve established some criteria that will give learners the edge over other candidates when they enter the labour market. One of these is establishing a digital portfolio of work and evidence proving that they can do what their CV’s claim.

So my current year 12 whom are just preparing for year 13 have started keeping a learning log in the form of blogs. They have so far written brief evaluations of what they have done and learnt in lessons (not a great deal at the moment as I’m waiting for Access 2013 and MS Project 2013 to be installed on the network and the new year 13 specification to be released – September 15), but we have been setting up blogs, using twitter etc and preparing as much as we can.

Additionally they will be using twitter to tweet about their blogs and what they have been doing in lessons.

Although it is a course requirement for year 13 to keep a learning log we are developing them more than being about ICT, so learners can include evidence from other subjects, evidence and information on extra-curricular and other achievements – all with a view to enhance University applications and ultimately employability.

We are also setting up and maintaining professional profiles using Twitter. So far learners have tweeted about their blogs and blog entries, and have searched for and followed people and institutions of professional interest, so far University’s that they may wish to apply to, or employers that they may like to work for, with the view of possible making some professional contacts. There is also the opportunity to develop this into the development and use of LinkedIn, but for now one step at a time.

Using Twitter we have been tweeting using #BBAICT13 and I’ll change the # to BBAICT12 – for year 12.

Although the learning log is not a course requirement for Year 12 I will be implementing the same strategy to keep consistency across KS5 and to enable the learners to generate a bigger body of evidence and showcase a wider cross section of their computing, ICT and digital skills.

We’ve also talked about online safety, and discussed how we can promote ourselves publically, but in a safe and secure way.

My long term goal is to give leaners a professional platform and online presence with a positive digital footprint which they can use to launch academic and professional careers.
Some examples of these blogs are: -


https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif




Update from Trinity Fields

Well, as with everyone else it's been a very busy time at school. And again, digital literacy means a different thing for us so.....

Some highlights…

The school has a Twitter account- it is quiet and a bit dormant but I am awaiting a September push on permissions from parents for pupils to be able to add content- from different school groups and I would like the school cafe to start this.

Two teachers are on twitter- our PE specialist is doing some Physical Literacy work with Welsh Government for SEN and Music teacher is networking well and putting  grant application for some WG money for teaching literacy and numeracy through music.

We do Teach Meet activities one Monday a term- where all staff present for 7 or 3 minutes on a topic and this has aided a 'can do' culture in the school. More staff are ready to present and share their specialisms and there is a heavy ICT bias, e.g. Clicker 6, iPads etc.

I got the Naace 2015 Impact Award in SEN in March for the Professional Learning Community work on Gesture Based Technology.  Which was nice.


The SEG/PDG projects on eyetracking are in full swing and I've just finished a Post Grad in Educational Leadership project essay on the Eyegaze Project at school that I submitted Monday- had some superb increases in some of the cohorts assessment results this year.

http://eyegazesen.wikispaces.com/home

We've been continuing our work with the Oculus Rift and VR in school, though it killed the laptop again two weeks ago and it's still not back from hospital yet.  I'm hoping to present on this at the next meeting. A big part of this has been pupil led- two pupils have shown the governors and visitors how it works and what it can do, they have also used new things and have now identified programs they want on it themselves through looking on the internet at home too.

http://virtualrealitysen.wikispaces.com/

Also I'm involved with an initial group of South Wales SEN schools who are looking at what Digital Competency a la The Donaldson Report means in an SEN environment, we're reporting back some findings in a couple of weeks on that to feedback to the Welsh Government so just before they overlook us we can tell them what we've done already on it....

Our Video Analysis work is almost done in the new Professional Learning Community- final meeting is on July 9th and hopefully we will be signing up for some video analysis software to enable us to evidence 'value added' for our very hard to reach pupils who may not progress in a conventional formal sense at school.

Phew, it's been busy!  Looking forward to meeting up!

Anthony Rhys
Trinity Fields School


Progress update

Since last we met I've:

  • Led a whole-school staff INSET on the use of Ipads in the school (GAFE, Aurasma, QR codes, Chirp and Socrative
  • Continued to integrate Ipads into lessons across the school
  • Setup a committee for driving cross-curricular ICT 
  • Arranged an upcoming sector-leading industry visitor for digital leaders
  • Become a part of a pilot scheme in conjunction with USW, Aspire2Be in driving technology-led lessons across the curriculum
  • At KS3, introduced deeper-thinking lessons on the impact of ICT in our everyday lives
  • Formed an IT working party to decide the curricular and technological pathway for the new school

Looking back, it seems I've done more than I thought, but still much less than I wanted. However, since this has been an exceptionally challenging year, I am happy on the whole, and anticipate the challenge of moving on from this tentative step forward.

Monday 22 June 2015

Final Frontier

Hi all,


I'm looking forward to our final session Wednesday! I'll be honest I haven't done a great deal more than the last time we met . The only other real progress I feel we have made in terms of digital literacy is we have recently added an E-Safety leaflet which is being sent out to all parents with the pupils school report. There is also talk of a parents digital literacy/e-safety meeting but this will now no doubt take place next term.  I've made reference to my last blog post below just to remind you all of what I've been up to.




Hi all,

I've set up a Digital Ambassadors club and have set up a blog for pupils to post comments etc on it. We meet on Mondays and have a range of boys and girls, mostly from year 7, 8 and 9. We mostly talk about internet safety but many boys are keen on gaming and all things tech so we try to incorporate that in as well. Some of the students have set up You Tube channels where they review games, software etc, they are very keen.

We have also tried to get involved in whole school digital citizenship by creating a 'Thought of the week' presentation for all year groups to use during internet safety week. We are still working on assemblies and I am looking to work with the PSE coordinator to include digital citizenship in the PSE POS. All ICT teachers also put on activities on Safer internet day for all the year groups we taught.

I have also been making use of Twitter much more, but really want to expand this after seeing lots of good practice from primary schools.  I have also been using the HWB with most pupils for a variety of tasks including emailing and setting up their own Wikis for ICT revision purposes. I am hoping to get a class to make a wiki for digital citizenship.

Off the top of my head I cant think of anything else.... just wish I had more time for this kind of stuff.....


Pupils in year 7 also 'perform' a cyber bullying play, which they turn into a video and edit it, this works quite well and the pupils enjoy this and find it more interesting than the usual talk they have.




Cheers all :)