Daily Tech Tidbits #8

March 17, 2020 Mr HillLeave a comment

Each day, whilst the school is closed, I have been sending daily tips and advice to our staff to support with their online learning provision. Sometimes it is in response to common questions, and sometimes it is just great tips and tools. I’ve decided to share them in light of the ongoing global impact of Covid-19.

Best practice:
Seesaw: I’d like to share with you an activity from Alex in which he is teaching Maths using Seesaw. What he has done is when creating the activity – he has created a multimedia example, and so then he can create either a set of slides or the task that children have to complete. He has then recorded his voice, but most importantly, he is writing or adding shapes live whilst speaking. If you didn’t know this was possible in Seesaw – now you do! So you can essentially use it as a whiteboard – even better if you have a stylus. (we can arrange for you to borrow an LT chromebook for a few weeks if you would like a stylus and touchscreen). Then this is added as separate to the actual template provided to complete the tasks. Again this means that as the student completes an activity on their template – they can refer to the instructions at any time without leaving their work, by clicking view instructions at the top of their page.

Top tips: Use the arrow shape in Seesaw as a pointer. Also you can pause at any point, add in some text on the screen, then play to have it magically appear.

Research online:

Just a reminder from Mel that whilst we wait for BrainPop’s free access, you can also use Britannica Online as a place for children to do some research. I think this site warrants a tutorial video for kids (and teachers) so I’ll make one this weekend – some of the tools when using this include changing your reading level, being able to cite correctly, and as a teacher, posting articles direct to a google classroom.

Daily Tips

Daily Tech Tidbits #7

March 17, 2020 Mr HillLeave a comment

Hello and Good Morning,

Great practice

In my unremitting quest to improve interaction and teacher instruction during school closure, It is only fair to pause and praise the outstanding work that is already being done to achieve these goals. I’ve heard from a number of secondary teachers who are using screencasts and google meets and Zoom to provide live learning. I’ve most enjoyed the videos I’ve seen though, and not just the ‘hello it’s good to see you’ videos, but the recorded screencasts that teachers have used to explain, demonstrate and teach, enabling the students to pause when needed, reflect, tell siblings to be quiet, make a brew, etc.. Allowing them to flourish in the best way that they can. This is leveraging technology in such an impactful way, and allows them to be saved and reused for revision and practice later in the year. Thanks to those of you for pushing yourself a little from your normal routine and possible comfort zone, because the kids love hearing from you a million times more than a random American math tutor, for example. This is fully in line with the vision for us to align with the ISTE standards for educators and students.

On the back of that – I’m looking for teachers who are happy to share a particularly concise and clear lesson they’ve created in order to inspire others. If you don’t mind that and are particularly proud of one – please send it across!

More Screencasting Support
Since we now have temporary unlimited access to screencastify, I challenged the Year 5 and Year 6 group to make their own screencast guides. Just a day in so far and boy have they delivered. One girl in particular, Sadie in Y5, created this incredible tips video using google slides, including using gradient colours and making words look 3D with a simple trick. She let me share this and it’s worth a watch if you have 8 minutes to spare. The confidence in these kids creating these teaching tutorials is brilliant. I’ve already learnt loads from them including a cool gimmick for when you google ‘wizard of oz’ and then click on the red slippers on the right! The best will be available next week on our LT website for all kids and teachers to use.
To help them I created a tutorial video on using screencastify (for children) feel free to share it with anyone who may want to create you a screencast.

Seesaw Activities
Please, if you create a great activity on seesaw, (and you may not know how great it is till after the students have attempted it!), please share it to the Discovery Bay School section. In your activities dashboard, select the activity you want to share, click share, then click on the school. Set the grades and subjects and then all shared. This then will build a fantastic library of activities for us all to use. If you are in Secondary and are interested in using Seesaw – please get in touch too.

Daily Tips

Daily Tech Tidbits #2

March 12, 2020 Mr HillLeave a comment

Flipgrid Feedback
First of all, there are two ways to give video feedback when watching the video from a teacher’s viewpoint, you can reply (under the video) or private. The reply one is the one I usually use, because the kids see it more obviously when they go to Flipgrid. Weirdly, the only way to see private feedback is to use this link https://my.flipgrid.com/ which is like an overview of all the videos they have posted. However, there is also an ’email feedback’ button and it is brilliant. You can both do private video and text and the email gets sent to the Gmail account instantly. So it is up to you to decide whether to get them to check emails, or to check that link above. Failing that, just hit them with a simple reply.

Seesaw Notifications

Just a reminder – from some feedback from parents – every time a comment is added to a post that is tagged with a child, the parent will get an email. They also get an email when you post a video, a document or a link. Equally, with specialists doing a great job of posting their activities too, and some teachers approving posts from before the holiday, we saw some parents receiving over 15 email notifications in one day. It is still very positive to be having constant communication, but do be mindful of this, particularly adding comments to posts tagged to all students. Don’t forget you can use the messaging function now to communicate to parents directly should you wish.

Google Meet for ‘Registering’ We are constantly reviewing best practice in what is unprecedented times for many, looking at how similar schools are managing the situation. We know that many schools are ‘registering’ kids by asking them to sign in to a 5 minute google meet (or similar) in the morning, announcing messages and then letting them get on with the day. Many schools are requiring this at the start of each lesson, before setting a task on or offline. Remember that if you would like to use Google Meet, it is easy to run a session and it is easy to see who attended. Whilst we encourage the tool for any teacher, it is primarily most effective in the Secondary environment.

Thanks, as always send me any questions you may have,
Dominic

Daily Tips

Daily Tech Tidbits #1

March 12, 2020 Mr HillLeave a comment

Hi All,
The slidebook has been updated with ten more video tutorials and some new resources, with more being added today. I am delighted with how many videos, Flipgrids and Quizizzs I have seen set up already.

There are going to be a number of emails being sent over the next few weeks, If that’s going to annoy you, or you need to organise more efficiently, then use the settings in gmail to move emails directly into a sub folder, you can learn how to do that here.

Anyway three things today:
Early Years (and Primary to some extent) : Numbots is now live, meaning you can now set a daily 5 minutes fluency practice for addition and subtraction. It begins very easily, but goes all the way up to double digit addition and subtraction. It is brand new, created by the team behind TT Rockstars, and in many ways is very similar. More information is in the Slide book. This resource can be used on a trial – and it is very affordable if you choose to extend.

EY and Primary: You probably knew this already, but when you set an activity on Seesaw, you can schedule it for in the future. This means you can set all your activities for the coming week in one go. Check the gif below to see how. Apologies, but you cannot schedule a normal ‘post to journal’ currently.

Secondary: Following a request, I looked into a good educational tool for annotating PDFs and came across https://www.kamiapp.com/, an educational resource which allows you to draw, highlight and type over PDF files. When you sign up, you will get 30 days free, which allows for Google Classroom integration. It also has a super feature having the PDF read out to you. The interface is a little clunky, and students need to register to start annotating, but it could be a solution for some of you in the coming weeks. More information in the slides book linked at the top of the email.

Thanks, as always send me any questions you may have,
Dominic