Tag Archives: classroom

community, digilearnscot

Collaboration and community

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This post follows a challenging week for myself, I reached out to a colleague sharing these challenges and received the comment from a colleague that I should feel proud of the leadership, compassion and support that I am offering teachers, pupils and parents during these challenging times and that my help and advice guidance have been invaluable to them and many others.

This has led me to reflect on two of the communities that I am proud to be a leading part of.  These are the Microsoft Educator community in Scotland and the Institute of Physics physics teacher community.

The vast majority of members of both these communities are like myself classroom teachers.

Microsoft Educator Community

I have been a user of digital technology for many years and joined the Microsoft Educator Community and became a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEExpert) for the first time 6 years ago.

Being part of this community has been invaluable at these times for the transfer of knowledge and sharing of information that takes place on a daily basis.  It is heart-warming to be able to ask questions and get answers from other teachers by sharing our expertise amongst the other 90 staff we are in turn able to support others within our school and local authority.  We have a weekly Teams call to discuss ideas, share practice and solve problems.

I have shared my previous and current experience with my colleagues in school and across the local authority, despite my job role being just a physics teacher.  This has led me to achieving trainer status due to the number of hours and level of support provided.

 I have created Glow help Teams for pupils and for staff and created videos to show both how to do things within Teams.  Videos on my YouTube channel include:

Colleagues, pupils and parents have shared their thanks for my help and assistance.

Physics community

In addition to being part of the MIEExpert community I am also part of the physics teacher community as a physics teacher coach for the Institute of Physics Scotland.

We have been holding webinars and meetings to support physics teachers.  Helping their wellbeing and providing support to build capacity in use of digital skills and advice on how to plan effective digital lessons.  These have been running for a couple of week very successfully with each meeting having at least 50 attendances showing that there is a need for this support.  Topics in the staff meeting included SQA estimates as well as other support.

On Tuesday we held a 90 minute workshop on using Microsoft tools and had over 80 attendees.  The presenters were all Scottish classroom teachers  from across the country:

Mr Burrett, Stewarton Academy, East Ayreshire
Mr Beattie, Inverclyde Academy, Inverclyde
Mrs Clarke, Queen Anne High School, Fife (Biology/science)
Mr McCord, Firrhill High School, Edinburgh

A Wakelet of resources was shared with colleagues with tips and advice.

The session was recorded and details can be found on the Talk Physics website. 

Feedback from the session was really positive and satisfying.  Two that sum up completely positive comments are:

  • This sort of event is invaluable to folks like me who are at the beginning of the journey with this stuff. Thanks so much
  • An excellent session. Presenters were clear, concise and very well prepared. Questions were answered quickly and helpfully. There was a real sense of community surrounding the proceedings. The team is to be congratulated for having the vision to step outside of the Physics environment to bring in experts regardless of their subject and for opening the session to scientists of all denominations. Once again Physics is leading the way. Well done.

The following day other colleagues in the IOPs physics coaching team gave a session for those using Google classroom tools.

Mr Lawrie, George Watson’s college, Edinburgh
Mr Crawshaw, Millburn Academy, Inverness
Mr Burke, Lochaber, Fort William
Mr Browett, Aberdeen

 The Wakelet of resources for this Google Classroom webinar are here.  The session was recorded and details can be found on the Talk Physics website. 

Helping educational partners

Today I have been helping our regional partner from Skills Development Scotland understand how they can use the Teams digital platform to provide careers advice and information to across Tayside.

classnotebook, OneNote

Week 3 OneNote and Classnote books

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This week I thought I would add some comments to the blog on OneNote and the class notebook add in.

I have been using OneNote workbooks with my classes to provide the learning materials.  This has involved creating and adapting learning materials for the National 5 and Higher physics pupils.   The workbooks are divided into sections based upon the topic.  Here is a snip from OneNote 2016, the lesson structure (pages) on the left.  The topic at the top (electricity) and my notebook list at the side.

notebook-layout

For some lessons I have added into OneNote:

  • Office Mix presentations
  • Prints from word or PDF
  • Embedded YouTube
  • Links to Scholar materials (scholar.hw.ac.uk)
  • Printed Powerpoint slides
  • Used Sways
  • Used Microsoft forms for quizzes

The class schedules have been entered as assignments using Microsoft Classroom although most tasks are completed within OneNote rather than being handed in on Classroom.  You can see the list of assignments (tasks) in this snip.

classroom-task-list

The OneNote class notebooks were created in Microsoft classroom and are therefore part on an O365 group.

It is possible to add assignment tasks using Microsoft Classroom and these can be pages from OneNote as seen from this snip.

new-assignment

When this method is used the pages are sent to an assignment section in the pupil workbook.  At the moment I am not really using this method as I find it better to preserve the OneNote structure of lessons in order in their topic group rather than having the OneNote page in a separate group.

Class notebook add in

An essential tool for teachers is the class notebook add in.  It can be downloaded for Office 2013 and 2016 versions from www.onenote.com/classnotebook .  Remember OneNote 2016 can be downloaded completely for free from www.onenote.com.

The class notebook add in allows you to send pages from your content library to individual pupils or to the class as a whole.

This adds the toolbar

classnote-book-tool-bar

These icons can be clicked to distribute a new page, the content library or a new section.

The review student work makes it easier to toggle through pupil work and assess or leave feedback.

The distribution of work is really straightforward but I would make the following recommendation.  Try to be more than one lesson ahead.  Sending additional resources is straightforward but must allow time for syncing and or pupils won’t always get the information in time. The distribution of resources takes these steps:

  • From content libary to each pupil’s notebook
  • From your computer to the cloud (sync might need to be forced)
  • From the cloud to pupil devices

These stages can take time particularly if the resources on the page or pages are large in file size.  In addition a forced sync shift F9 or right click on notebook name is needed to initiate the syncing at times and bandwidth limitations can make this slow for a full class doing it at once.

sync

Therefore I would suggest work ahead and have resources for future lessons downloaded before the end of the previous one so pupils can work on things straight away.

If you have more than one class it can be confusing to remember which classes have been sent the resources and keeping the content library up to date.  Pupils can pull over resources from the content library but I find it better to place the resources directly into their workbooks with a copy in the content library as a backup.

The syncing time and lack of planning have caused a copy of issues this week when I didn’t send the resources early enough in time or distributed to the wrong class notebook as I have two higher classes.  You can check the pupil area in OneNote 2016 to see what you have sent.  It caused an issue for quick starting of an assessment this week that I deliberately didn’t send too early to the pupils and syncing took sometime as well as me not sending it at all for a class.  Pupils found completing the assessment on the Surface using digital inking really straightforward and it made marking leaving feedback really easy.

digital prototype progress, OneNote

Week 2 Classroom and OneNote, Teachmeet

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During this week pupils have been getting more used to how to use the Surfaces, the inking and O365 applications.

I found out this week that there were still a few pupils that hadn’t got their Physics OneNote setup correctly on their Surface.  The initial setup involves going to Classroom, then the OneNote tab, opening the OneNote Online, then clicking edit to open it in OneNote.  This allows OneNote to know the file location, once done this does not need to be repeated although on the Surfaces it was repeated to link make sure both OneNote 2016 and OneNote app had the class notebook.

It was a little surprising to find out that the installation hadn’t been completed after the setup sessions and using it in class to do work.

Pupils are now getting to grips with the Windows inking in OneNote and this is generally working well although there have been an odd event of non working pen and a few forgotten pens.  Many of the non working pen incidents haven’t been due to the pen but because pupils have tried to write in the content library section of OneNote which is read only.  Pupils can only write or type in their OneNote section.

I am becoming more adapt in distributing content in OneNote after a few times where I sent the same pages twice.  This duplication has allowed us to practice how to delete pages from our notebook and many pupils have learnt to rearrange the order of the notebook if they wished.

This week I have started to leave written feedback in the OneNote and marked some digital work.  This worked pretty well although due to my initially setting up the notebook incorrectly with pupils from another class in with one of my classes I have now deleted the additional sections.  Reviewing work was straightforward with the OneNote class notebook add in.  https://www.onenote.com/classnotebook

classnotebookpower-workreview-student-work

Additional frustrations have been encountered this week with 3 pupils turning up to class without their Surface.  About 4 have also turned up without a charged Surface or a charger.  Some have been used my charger and at least there are plugs in the classroom that can be used for this circumstance.

There have been a few cases of having to remind pupils of appropriate use, one for shoe shopping, another for playing music, another for using the narration tools to say silly sentences.

More positively some have been using the Learning tools to read out information or the narrate function to turn speech into text.

The last task of this week was to ensure that pupils know how to hand in work using Classroom.  To check this I set a task today that involved them opening a Word file from classroom then editing it in Word Online writing in answers and then clicking the hand in work section to send the completed work to me.  I can then check and mark the work, sharing an assessment score.  I can hand the work back if it is incomplete with advice.  I can have a conversation or provide feedback to the pupil too.  The hand-in feature also advises if work was not handed in or is late.  I plan to use the hand in feature to check pupils have done the prior learning before class.  The work that can be added can be in Word, OneNote, a FORM quiz or a link.

At this point the Higher classes has a week of work still on their Classroom.  The N5 classes only have one lesson so I need to work to get more of their learning online with the intention that both groups have 2 weeks of work to look at.

At present their has been little flipped learning and this has been deliberate whilst pupils are learning to use the technology and where to access it.  This will now be gradually increased over the next week or so.  I have however had a number of pupils showing me work they had done earlier to prepare for class or to catch up on work missed so am seeing advantages in having resources more readily available to pupils.  In addition the digital learning has better allowed me to push pupils who have completed their work early into the new section or more complex past paper questions.

Early this week I discussed the prototype, OneNote, OneNote learning tools and the use of the Surface with Angus colleague responsible for pupils with Visual impairments.  As a result of the discussion we are going to trial a Surface device with a S3 pupil.  So I will have something to post in the future about accessibility of the Surface for pupils with visual impairments.

Digital Teachmeet

On Thursday I attended the Falkirk digital teachmeet at St. Mungo’s High School, Falkirk.  St. Mungo’s is now a Microsoft Innovative School and the digital teachmeet was excellent CPD.  I shared 5 minutes about the digital inking in the Surface Pro and how my pupils were using them and OneNote.  Other teachers discussed the O365 applications.  Here is a presentation of what I showed live recorded in Office Mix.

 

There was lots of great practice and information to pick up from my fellow Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts.  Not sure which Tweeted picture is the worst!

You can read more about the event on the Falkirk digital TeachMeet page.

If you are interested in digital learning I would recommend that you follow the above on Twitter.  The event was fantastic and I hope to be involved in organising an Angus digital Teach Meet sometime in the future and invite some of those speaking in Falkirk up to share their ideas.

Angus Teachmeet

I am involved in organising with Kellie Smith an Angus Teach meet on Tuesday 29th November after the Angus Learning Festival at Brechin High School from 4.30 to 6.00 pm.  Please come along to listen or do a 2 minute presentation to share some ideas. Ideas can be any good ideas or practice, not just digital learning and technologies, although my presentation will be on that theme.

Sign up using this link https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=oyzTzM4Wj0KVQTctawUZKWdhPNwe8ftPowdGcOI9yIZUOUIyUElPQk9ENzRRT1lLWEpNUDYzWEtXMS4u