I have been creating a range of tutorials for my YouTube channel over the last couple of weeks.  Earlier this week I completed the last of my Haiku Deck tutorials.  If you do not know this tool, it is an epic tool for learning and I highly recommend it.  Today I was checking the stats on my YouTube channel and I have been approached by Haiku Deck themselves.  They have seen what I have created and love them.  They have asked if they can publish them via their own social networks and have created a playlist on their own YouTube channel of my tutorials.  Great stuff.

The team at Haiku Deck had this to say about my tutorials:

"I wanted to reach out and let you know that we were all quite impressed with them and their effective balance of thoroughness and conciseness."

I call that an endorsement.  You can check out the tutorials below.
 

I have spent the day in Hamilton at the WPA Catch Up Day conference.  The WPA is the Waikato Principals' Association and they have a day such as this once a term.  Today I was asked to present two sessions for the Principals.  The day was well attended with over a 100 delegates attending. 

In the first sessionI wanted the Principals to reflect on student engagement and elearning's role in facilitating this.  I wanted to make the point that it was Mohammed who moved to the mountain and not the other way round.  I illustrated how almost every facet of our society has undergone massive change precipitated by the Internet.  The traditional methods, avenues and controllers of information have all undergone a seismic shift, all except education.  We have access to more and varied information from a wider range of sources, we have almost unlimited access to music, we can create and publish content online and have audiences of millions.  But education alone is still bucking this trend, we continue to deliver learning in almost the same way as we did 30, 50 even a hundred years ago and we wonder why we find it harder and harder to engage students who live in the multimedia, multithreaded world of the Internet, to work in the linear paper based world of learning.  

In the second session I spoke about the importance of intellectual property in relation to elearning.  I highlighted some of the strategies I have developed and implemented in different schools to induct new staff into school, to raise the base level of competency with elearning for existing staff, the importance of tutorials to teach a consistent skills set and how teachers can capture their own good practice to help others learn and observe how elearning is being integrated and managed in other classrooms.  Finally I spoke about how important it is for schools to mandate elearning reflections and to share resources, lessons, activities, exemplars etc to a common source such as an LMS or closed wiki so that all staff can grow from the collected knowledge of all staff in the school.  The last element of this complete and managed approach to building a sustainable elearning environment in a school was a managed exit strategy for departing staff.

You can see both presentations below:

Presentation 1:

I have been encouraging a dispersed group of people throughout New Zealand to work together on a collaborative time lapse project, the last effort a slice in time was all meant to happen between the same 30 minutes on the same day.  I still really like this idea and want to explore this further.  Our second project is the altogether looser focus of "autumn"  I have spent the weekend photographing sequences for my contribution to the final product.  I will be using these clips in another movie I am putting together just about Auckland.  At this stage I need to work out how I can export higher quality clips from Lightroom using the timelapse plug in.  I expect I will have to export the images individually and then assemble them in Quick Time and then edit them in iMovie, for the moment.  Clunky.

Autumn Timelapse viii from David Kinane on Vimeo.

The slice in time project has now been edited and launched  I asked for collaborators to my initial idea back in March.  For a first effort it is not bad.  We are congregating around the #nztimelapse tag and are already planning a second collaborative effort.  This time we are thinking about the colours of autumn and will edit the video so that the colours are going through the spectrum.  Here is the first effort anyway.  If you want to be involved either follow the #nztimelapse tag or contact me.  Feedback on this initial effort is welcomed.

Over the last couple of years I have been creating a suite of resources to help teachers to integrate elearning tools and activities into their classroom plans.  The purpose of these tools is to provide teachers with ideas to get them started with elearning in the classroom, links to web sites and software programmes that can be used to deliver the learning, apps that also facilitate the same outcomes and finally a growing suite of interactive tutorials with which teachers can self train or provide support to their students to enable the elearning workflow in the classroom to be as smooth as possible.

One of my most popular breakouts at the Ulearn and Learning at Schools conferences was my 90 tools in 90 minutes presentations, a rapid romp through 90 free elearning tools available to teachers to use in their classrooms, this presentation included a brief overview of how I had used the tools in classes at differing age levels.  Although popular, this presentation on a practical level for teachers only really provided them with a list of tools that could promise elearning potential, it did not provide them with the additional support they needed, which is why I have abandoned that presentation and have been concentrating creating and providing resources for schools that support and guide teachers, it is after all what they need.

I have been developing my support tools further, but now creating exemplars and in class support materials for teachers, to provide a whole package of elearning support. Below are some screen shots of the kind of work flow I am providing to schools from lesson plans to outcome exemplars via tutorials, classroom management strategies and support materials.  A one stop elearning shop service.

In the screen shot below you can see the 7th activity planned around the topic of weather, using elearning tools.  The teachers can use these ideas as a springboard into a direction of learning that the class wish to follow or they can use the ideas to scaffold them through the continuum of lesson plans.  Each activity illustrates what apps, computer programmes and websites could be used to facilitate the outcome dictated by the initial learning intention of the school curriculum document.

I also produce documents to help teachers provide a scaffold to the students so that they can focus on the learning rather than the mechanics of producing content with elearning tools.  The aim of this resource below is for the students to focus on the content each broadcast should have, the structure and the duration.  Once the template for the storyboard and the characters, see the video at the end, has been created, this scaffold below is designed to focus the students on content and the production time should be short, less than 20 minutes, meaning that this activity can easily be a daily event for the duration of the topic.  In addition the requirement to create content quickly, creates a model and system that can be applied to other learning areas throughout the year.

And finally I am now producing exemplars of what the learning activity could look look like, using the continuum illustrated above and supported by the interactive tutorials that provide just in time support to teachers and students alike.

I follow the social media guru, Linda Coles on Linked In.  She is always sending out notes and information and today she sent out a post talking about 'digital body language.'  I read her post today and  immediately wanted to share it via my networks as the content has a significant resonance with digital citizenship and how students should behave online.  I really liked her use of the term 'digital body language.'  You can see her check list of appropriate positive body language actions below:

• Do use a greeting and sign off with your name included.
• Follow Dale Carnegie’s advice and always use the other persons’ name when addressing them.
• Don’t use all capital letters; it’s the digital equivalent of shouting at someone.
• Respond to connection requests with a brief “nice to meet you” message just as you would if meeting someone offline.
• Do get back to those that have made the effort to reach out to you digitally. You wouldn’t ignore them in person.
• Watch your spelling and grammar. It really is your digital body language so make it top notch.
• Avoid lots of exclamation marks, you look angry !!!!!
• Use the smiley face icons to help the reader understand your tone.

The list is simple and if we all take time to reflect, common sense, but in the instant world of social media and the Internet, it is all too easy to dash something off and offend the recipient, even if we did not intend to do so.  Linda's advice is timely for the business professionals that follow her and also very pertinent to our students who need to develop much more finely attuned 'digital body language' in order to thrive and succeed on the Internet of the near future.

I was chatting to Luke in the South Island on Twitter on Friday night, when I mentioned to him a time-lapse project I have been mulling over throughout the summer.  Luke said he was really keen to be involved, so for a brief moment in time Twitter lit up with others wanting to be part of the project.  I have added a page to my Amazing Journeys wiki and this will be the base that we will collaborate, problem solve and create from.  The project is currently set to run on Easter Tuesday, April 2 2013 if all goes to plan.  You can follow our progress on the wiki and here on the blog.

So why have I included this personal pet project on an education blog?  For me one of the key elements that make elearning such an engaging medium in the classroom is the facility to collaborate and problem solve that the technology enables.  Within minutes of posting the idea to Twitter, several people expressed immediate interest, the concept intrigued them and over time more and more have also requested to join.  Agreed, this project is not going to strike a chord with everyone, but those that are interested will want to get involved as it speaks to them at some level.  I think that we should as adults reflect on this.  If we get excited at the potential to be creative, collaborative and in egalitarian way all contribute to the project as a whole, why do so many teachers find this kind of project so hard to facilitate in their classroom.  This project could just as easily be a class based one, just think of the literacy involved in the collaboration alone, let alone the visual literacy, the problem solving, the promotion, the evaluation and the sense of community that it will engender.

What are your thoughts?  Want to emulate this in the classroom, need some buddy classes?  Let me know and let's do it.  But let's do it as time-zone slices, lets get 24 schools in different time-zones to all to a time-lapse of mid-day in their time-zone all facing North.  Or some such similar focus.

I have been having a dialogue with Jacqui on her blog site about how to maximise the learning potential of iPads or tablets in general in  a classroom.  As a result of this collaboration Jacqui wanted to cross post one of my posts so that her readers to could see what we have been discussing.  You can see what she has to say and what she wanted to post of mine here:

http://askatechteacher.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/ramp-up-your-ipad-use/

Many years ago I issued a challenge to my friends to share their journey to work, I had recently broken my arm, it was a complex break and I was in a cast for three months and had to stop cycling to work.  So I walked to and from work.

I had always enjoyed looking at what I passed on my bike commute, but the slower pace of walking made me appreciate all the more wonders that we pass every day in our cars and hardly acknowledge.  Once back on the bike I determined to record the amazing journeys we complete every day.  I strapped a video camera to my bike and rode to work and posted the film and at the same time set up a wiki and a challenge to my friends to record their amazing journeys.  You can see what they shared on my Amazing Journeys wiki.

With the advent of the iPad this challenge has become much easier.  I have been a fan of time-lapse photography for a long time and create short time-lapse videos for fun in my spare time.  But time-lapse is a great tool for the classroom to record change over time, how clouds move, how shadows change etc that what was once the preserve of specialised equipment can now be in the hands of every student.  So my app of the week this week is Time-Lapse a free iOS app that easily allows you to create time-lapse videos with your iPad.

I have been working with several schools recently where I am encouraging the leadership team to become an integral part of the feedback process on students wikis.  A couple of schools have asked me to design virtual "stickers" that the SMT can use to award students for their virtual work.  Below is an example of one my stickers being used on a Year 1 student's wiki page. The student concerned is delighted with the feedback and the sticker they have now got on their wiki.

I have just written an article for Interface Magazine about how to best use an iPad in the classroom.  I wrote the article in response to my own observations about how iPads are being used and also in response to a blog post  written by Tom Whitby, who did the Emporer's New Clothes task of stating that a worksheet is still a worksheet, even when it is on an iPad.  This echoes my own observations with teachers who use an iPad in their classroom.  They tend to use this high tech device to deliver low level learning.  The trouble is to the casual observer, it looks great to see engaged students working enthusiastically on their shiny new iPads in a classroom, but what learning is happening? I have also been part of a conversation with Jacqui Murray who was sharing her thoughts on the best apps for a classroom.  I shared my thoughts on formative assessment and publishing, points which she agreed on.

When I work with teachers who are using iPads in their classroom, I get them to audit their apps and to ask so what? questions of the apps.  I need for them to know the learning and formative assessment potential of each of their apps.  If the apps is unjustified busy work, it is scrapped.  I then introduce this concept I have developed called layering, where the best features of one app are used to create content that can be enhanced in another app.  I get the teachers to base the learning intention outputs around the workflow of several apps.

There is much enthusiatic, almost evangelistic, hype surrounding tablets in classrooms that it can be hard to see the wood from the trees.  In the last week two articles have surfaced asking the question about the validity of tablets in classrooms.  One asks how much are iPads really helping in the classroom  and the other simply states that a worksheet is still a worksheet even if it has been digitised.  One vlogger has even gone to the lengths of advising against purchasing iPads becuase they are a waste of money.

There is a lot in each of these sources that should encourage us to pause and reflect.  I have been working with schools over the last 18 months who have been slowly integrating iPads and other tablets into their classrooms.  And almost uniformly I see the following pattern.  Teachers are initially very excited about this new tool, they rush off and install hundreds of free apps and play.  They marvel, they enthuse, they share.  The hype that surrounds the iPad in particular imbues it with almost mystical powers.  Spoiler alert, - it is not mystical, it is not education's panacea, it is a tool.  And like any tool, used well it far exceeds its promise, used poorly then it grossly under-performs.  And this is where the natural attrition happens.  Many teachers are looking for a silver bullet to solve their elearning integration issues and hope that merely having an iPad with a plethora of carefully chosen education apps arrayed in curriculum folders will provide the solution.  And this is where the comments from Tom Whitby's post come in. Teachers do not get the expected bang from their iPad when they simply digitise their existing practice, a worksheet is still a worksheet.

Where the magic happens is when a teacher adapts their classroom pedagogy to integrate the collaboration, the problem solving, the publishing that the apps can enable. 

When working with staff I encourage them to audit their apps into four categories and then place them into folders marked with the appropriate category:

1. Enrichment - practice tasks
2. Publishing - tools that allow them to share learning quickly, often getting stuff off the iPad is the issue
3. Collaboration - apps that enable students to work together in cyberspace
4. Problem Solving - speaks for itself

On the face of it enrichment apps can be seen as digitised existing practice and it is tempting to label these as bad or irrelevant.  But once the staff have sorted their apps they have a very visual audit of their apps and the vast majority of them are indeed enrichment. The question I then ask them is "If a child is using a particular app, how do you know what they have done?  What formative assessment information has that activity provided to you?"  Often what is educationally a good app, is also very poor at enabling information to be stored or shared, especially the free ones.  Without this kind of feedback, to the casual observer a child working on an iPad could simply be seen as doing busy work.  Which is why I the encourage teachers to review their apps using the following series of questions:

Once teachers start to ask these kind of questions about their apps, I then show them how to "layer" apps together to enable them to get the information they want, to enable students to publish their learning quickly and independently.  At the heart of this is good planning.  A teacher needs to know what learning intentions an app or a suite of apps can facilitate and plan accordingly.  What tablets offer in the classroom is immediacy and mobility.  What the teacher needs to bring to this immediacy is creativity, good classroom management and planning backed by a robust assessment strategy.

Computers in education have promised a new dawn for learning for over a generation.  For a long time much of that promise was in the too hard basket for all but a die hard bunch of techie teachers.  With convergence of technologies, interoperability and now mobility, tablets really do offer that new dawn in an easily accessible and intuitively interfaced package.  But and there is a but, there needs to be a shift in teacher pedagogy backed by revised classroom management strategies and excellent planning and assessment strategies to realise this dawn.  Where teachers have made this shift, then the breathless accolades for iPads maybe warranted, but at the heart of that impact is a talented teacher who has seen the potential this tool offers to learning and they have adapted, they have assimilated and are succeeding.

 Yesterday I Tweeted out the following:
And to date on Slideshare it has been viewed over 5000 times, so clearly the subject matter hits the appropriate teacher sweetspot.  But as I have been telling the schools I have been giving Teacher only Day workshops at over the last week, they do not need to be the experts, they are time poor.  But teachers want to know all the variables of a resource before they release into the wild of their classroom and I can understand why they would want to.  But I argue that teachers did not become teachers to then become tech support geeks.  They can if they want to, but the vast majority of the teachers I deal with just want to get on with teaching.  Hence the popularity of silver bullet lists as indicated in my tweet and my presentation.

I believe that it is far more important that teachers know what  learning an elearning tool can facilitate, rather than how to use it.  Which is why I have developed my interactive tutorials.  These tutorials can be used by students and be used as a just in time resource for teachers.  I firmly believe that we will get better buy in with elearning when we allow teachers to teach, but teach using a different set of pencils and exercise books and my tutorials facilitate this.  What teachers need to spend more time thinking about is how to integrate their chosen suite of elearning tools into their class programme and how to manage equitable access to computers to facilitate the learning intended in a timely manner.  In addition, teachers need to be shown how to use and re-use student generated work to build individual student capacity which by deliberately planning to use student work, immediately gives the work authenticity and relevance to their students.  It is these practical issues that I cover in my workshops.  These workshops have been designed to work in tandem with the tutorials.  My workshops have been designed to demonstrate to teachers the how of elearning integration and to provide them with a range of practical teaching ideas based around the tools that they eagerly seek lists of via Twitter and elsewhere.  Once teachers see how elearning tools can be 'layered' together to facilitate deeper thinking, this is when the light goes on and the magic happens.  This is when teachers start to get elearning and want more.

Today was my last ToD (teacher only day) of the current crop.  And my brief for today was as follows: "Be inspirational."  So no pressure then!  As I reflect on what has been a great, if exhausting and intense week.  I realise that I have had the responsibility of making the case for elearning, re-assuring the terrrified, stretching the converted and envigorating the lethargic.  And on the whole I can see that I have done just that.  When a teacher only day is just you, the trick is to pitch it just right, to engage and not alienate all of the audience, no matter what level they are at.

Today I was working with an elite team, a school within a school I called it.  These 12 teachers are spearheading a 1:1 laptop programme in their classrooms.  The day started fabulously with the principal encouraging the staff to "smash" what was established, to be brave, to be innovative.  Then it was my turn to follow that and then inspire them.  We talked about thinking big, I cautioned them against simply digitising their existing pedagogy.  I then spent some time sharing with the team some of the innovative collaborative and problem solving elearning work I have undertaken with different teachers at different schools over the last couple of years.  This really got them going.  It got the going so much that I was asked to extend my session.  They re-wrote the agenda for the day and asked me to continue by demonstrating a range of elearning tools that I use for collaboration and problem solving.

As I said the the teachers that I worked with yesterday, I am really keen on layering tasks, tools and learning opportunities and to both sets of teachers I have shown them practical examples of just that strategy.  Finally, a couple of the teachers asked me how they can find time to learn how to use the tools I had been waxing lyrically about.  At the time I was enthusing on a blend of Blender and the Unity Game Engine.  And that is the key, teachers do not need to be masters of these tools, no more so than they have to monitor and master the state of the pencils in their class. Give the problem to the students to solve, let them own the problem, let them realise that you do not have the answer and that to solve the problem, they have to master it. 

As I head into the weekend and begin to contemplate my week next week and the term ahead, I am excited to be getting back into schools to continue to "inspire" teachers to be innovative with their elearning integration.  2013 should be a great year.  Keep watching this space as I document the projects that I have planned for these classrooms, the workshops and the tutorials I have in mind for 2013.