Tag Archives: lockdown

Lockdown Learning 21 May 2020 – Teacher Taught⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Some notes, part of a ragged collection on lockdown learning

Teaching via blogs, teams and meets it a bit like throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. I am not getting the same bunch turning up everyday. This makes planning a series of lessons difficult. Or continuing something.

My team meetings consist of some of the following:
– A bit of chat, perhaps “round the room” sharing news although if that happens every day most folk dry up after 2 or 3
– A few maths questions, pupIls note down answers and then we review and discuss.
– “Number talks”
– Tables bingo
– Every week we take a poem: read it on the first day; discuss words the next; Poetic techniques the next and do a bit of writing the next two. 10 minutes a day.
– A general knowledge quiz
– Discussions of some of the tasks on the weekly blog post.

I try to keep it moving along, light and happy.

We tried 5 minutes drawing with soft music one day this week, it seemed to go down well. I’ve done the same with writing. Either on paper then pasted into the chat. Again using poetry keeping it short.

Of course this is interrupted by pupils dropping out, trying to get back in! Mics not working, audio dropping etc.

I also run a Minecraft server for an hour or so everyday. I mostly step back. Stick on the text to speech and try and get some prep done. Not particularly successfully. Every so often I wander about amazed at what is being done. It is a pretty open ended task, a virtual Banton. It seems to develop in fits and starts. It drops away then an idea picks up. Fascinating to watch. I’ve never had more than 7 pupils in at once.

Today I was completely surprised, two of the class wanted to ‘give’ me the school uniform. It seems in Minecraft there are ways to pass on these thing. Some instructions in chat followed, but they were to complicated for me. One pupil then decided to make a video. And drop it in teams. 2 minutes later job done. I’ve got my uniform on.

Text of a blog post today, “I know I’m like two weeks late with this work but here it is.”

Lockdown Learning 18 May 2020 – virtual devices⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

screenshot Farrago, Loopback, Teams

Notes to self as I try and teach myself to teach remotely. 

 

Powerpoint note, how annoying is Design Ideas. To turn it off you need to turn off all MS services in the privacy tab of the prefs. And relaunch app. And it didn’t seem to work for me. Back to Keynote – Export for me.

Teams

I am putting Announcements in 2 channels, then the next day removing them from the main channel and taking away the right to reply.

Got loopback working today. Dropping the Pass-Thru might have done the trick. This means I can mix in audio, Farrago in the meet today, with my mic.

screenshot Farrago, Loopback, Teams
Click for Big!

The Hands Up option turned up in Teams meeting for most of my class today. Good news was it seems to be in iOS as well as PC & mac.

Had a few more slides with photos today. These proved to be ‘laggy’ for some of the class. The children found that opening the chat and closing it seems to force a screen refresh and of the the slide shows up.

Tried having 5 minutes silent drawing in the meeting. I had my phone camera on my paper and some music in the background (loopback). It seemed to go down well.

Lockdown Learning 15 May 2020 – Children are bonkers⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Notes to self as I try and teach myself to teach remotely. See More lockdown learning for some sort of background.

Experimenting with Farrago & loopback to merge different audio devices into Team meeting, not successful so far, mic seems to lose volume & extra background noise. Seems like a good idea, can bring in other audio to meeting.

An online lesson that goes a bit wrong really effects my mood. Given the circumstances this is going to happen quite often. A lot of my eggs in one hour.

North Lanarkshire have decided that all Teams should follow a naming pattern, NLC School Name Class Name. This really spoils the readability of posts when I want to mention the class.

You can turn on text to speech in Minecraft, then you can listen to the chat while working. The music is quite relaxing too.
Children are bonkers.

More lockdown learning⤴

from @ wwwd – John's World Wide Wall Display

Some notes….

A few weeks ago I blogged about how I was tackling providing some home learning for my pupils. Since then we had a two week break and have been working on line for a couple of weeks since. The class is a multi-composite of p4 to 7, 24 children.

Some children continued to pop into our Class Team and post to their e-Portfolios over the break and I did make some Holiday homework suggestions.

Since the holidays I’m continuing on the path I started. A weekly post, with activity suggestions, monitoring and commenting of the portfolios and being available in our team at least 9-3.

I am getting a fair response on the e-Portfolios, these are Glow WordPress blogs the class are used to posting to. I’ve had over 200 posts since lockdown started with about 20 out of 24 children posting at least once. I’ve put, with permission, a selection of screenshots on our class blog: Learning at Home

We have started having a conference call every day in Teams. This lasts an hour and I’ve been doing alternative mornings and afternoons. I am finding that I need a fair bit of time to prep for this. The attendance has been around half the class.

The connection in Teams seems not too bad. I am basically working my way through a mini program from a PowerPoint deck. I am finding if I keep these as light as possible, without transitions that seems to work best technically. Some of the class who were using phones don’t seem to be able to see the slides but they have negotiated use of another device at times.

The different interfaces and affordances of Teams on different devices are frustrating. For example I can’t just start a meeting from my iPad in a channel. I can call an individual, or join one set up on a computer, just not kick one off. Guessing what is happening at the other end is fun too.

There also doesn’t seem to be a way on mobile or a table to see the meeting and the chat at the same time. This precludes pupil putting up their hand in the chat. That means that discussions can get either a bit confusing or we need to go round the room which takes a fair bit of time, or there are overlapping answers. I remember the ‘hands up’ feature in Flashmeeting many years ago. I see MS is starting to roll this out to the desktop apps, but it would be great to have in in mobile, web, phones and tablets my class are using.

I’ve begun to try muting all the mikes and telling the pupils to un-mute as a sort of hands up.

I try a range of things in the meeting, it is difficult to make it too interactive. I’ve tried having my phone & an iPad hooked in alongside my computer but failed to show the class anything. I thought the phone on a camera stand would be a great way to demo things. Turned out the video did not take over the main screen for most and the class could not see it. Coming out of presenting a PowerPoint and demoing on my Mac camera didn’t work very well either half the class could not see what I was doing. Swapping between PowerPoint and webcam seems problematic and opening the whiteboard slow.

I presume a lot of these problems are due the the huge number of folk using teams around the world, I wish they would stop with the TV adverts and give me some bandwidth;-)

We have tried number talks and quizzes. The whiteboard has sometimes worked for the number talks. Hard for the pupils on a computer to use with a mouse (me too). Demos on slides with questions and anything else I can think of. Most of the ideas I’ve seen around this sort of learning are aimed at secondary or tertiary students. I think primary might be a little different.

Last week we tried a writing lesson, we had discussed the poem maggie and milly and molly and may by E. E. Cummings each day during the week. On Thursday we tried to write out own versions. First we brainstormed in several sections: names, objects etc. One at a time with me talking for a couple of minutes, then two minutes writing time followed by the children telling the rest their ideas.

Next we went through in couplets in the same sort of way, I read a couplet, gave my own example and then had two minutes writing and then sharing. Not unlike you would do in class except I could not see what was going on or work briefly with individuals. I think it went well despite the strangeness of having two minute timed silences. We needed the silence as some pupils will just talk through the two minutes. I am beginning to like the mute all button.

I had hoped that some sort of flipped learning might be a way to go, but the videos I’ve suggested pupils watch don’t get as much reaction as simple worksheets or writing tasks the pupils can do and post to their e-Portfolios.

The class are usually really creative (cardboard, photos and poetry the last 3 post before lockdown on our blog). The don’t seem to pick up on the creative suggestions as much as I expected. I think they need a little more support and encouragement.

My plan is to slowly expand the range of activities and technologies I offer. Testing something new one week and using it a bit more the next. Taking things slowly.

The week before last we briefly tested Minecraft Education Edition. I managed to get it working on my Mac so that some of the children could login to the same world. This week we had a few more sessions, them most pupils we got in was 7, they seem to have fun. I write another post about that.

The next step is to start putting some assignments in teams and see how that goes. I tried one this week, got 9/24 pupils competing a quiz. As we didn’t use Teams in class I think we need or add these things slowly and make sure as many as want to can use the technology. I’ll try a couple more next week and see how it goes.

I am also wondering about spending a little more formal time in the Teams chat as opposed to a meeting. At the moment it is mostly used to announce the meetings and Minecraft sessions. A couple of pupils have handed work in there too as an alternative to their e-Portfolios.

We also use Sumdog, it is quite a popular activity in class but I’ve not had much take up from home. About half the children are using it but only for a short time each week. The NLC Sumdog completion starts on Friday so that might encourage a bit more use.

As I am getting more children involved in posting to their e-Portfolios than anything else to will continue to be one of the main focuses. Most of the class have posted there at least once, many frequently. One thing that surprises me is the number of pupils working on paper and uploading photos of the work to their blogs. I presume some of this is due to access to hardware.

Teams meeting have maxed at 13 pupils, out of a class of 24. Afternoons seem more popular than mornings, I think some pupils are sleeping late. I am switching to more afternoon meetings next week. I’ll also continue to try different ideas in the meeting, give pupils time to complete tasks in chunks as I did with the writing this week.

I am just learning the ins and outs of Teams by trying things out. I’ve seen a few useful videos and posts but mainly just test as I go. It might be time to step back a wee bit and find out more. Unfortunately a lot of information is aimed at secondary schools or business like environments where the variety and access to hardware is not a problem. Time researching software is also not time preparing for the class.

I am also feeling my way to the both the content and delivery in Teams. Again most of the advice I’ve seem seems to be around delivering a secondary course quite different from a multi-composite primary.

It would also be slightly daunting to think about who is in the audience. It certainly sounds like many in my class are in a shared space.

It is taking a surprising amount of time to do this. Several hours at the weekend to put together the weekly post and two to three to prep each Team meeting. Hopefully I’ll get better at this. I also am trying to quickly comment on e-Portfolios and reply in Teams. I try to keep everything light as I my main aim is to keep in touch with as many of the class as possible. Having a multi-composite makes planning more interesting.

I am very lucky in having a supportive wife, my daughter is grown and away, I’ve little in the way of home responsibilities. I’ve no ide how you would manage if you had kids at home or a partner that needed the living room space too…

This is very much a case of fumbling around in the dark. I’ve not read much about how other primary teachers are tackling this and wonder if there are any patterns emerging.

#OER20 Still reverberating around kitchens and home offices around the world.⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog

The  #OER20 conference was an interesting experience . It was brilliantly switched from face to face to becoming a wholly on-line conference in a matter of weeks and it proved to be a great experience on many levels. What a great achievement by ALT team who have even shared the methodology they employed to run the online conference.

The #OER conference always has great speakers and explores a broad range of open educational practice from around the globe. In some ways with us all sitting isolating in different parts of the world and beaming into home offices , kitchens in my case ,  it seemed to emphasise the global nature of open educational thinking and practices.

I'm guessing we were all balancing our institutional commitments. I've reflected these in some earlier posts and workload and on-line meetings did get in the way of some of the sessions I would have liked to tune in to.

The on-line conference grew from it's usual physical size of around 400 delegates to 1300 delegates , the social hangouts and back channels allowed some of the networking and chatting that is a critical component of the learning that comes from a conferences, though I have to say I missed the mingling and meeting old friends and new.

It was topical and on the ball and even managed to have its own Blackboard Collaborate Bombing - it's not just Zoom, it  can happen on any platform folks.


I've embedded the conference playlist here ..




You can sneak a peak and many of the attendees who completed a splot and played social bingo.
As Lorna Campbell succinctly highlights

Please note, the OER20 conference wasn’t just free as in speech, it was also free as in beer, so if you participated in the event, either listening in to the presentations, or even just following the hashtag online, please consider making a donation to the conference fund. Every little helps to support ALT and cover the cost.

Our own session went well ... without rehearsal we summed up what we have achieved through a collaborative partnership around a shared G-Suite for Education - and the travails of getting staff to work in the open. You can find a recording of session and be your own judge.  The site is in transition to NMIS and Strathclyde University and is currently not sitting on it's usual domain - the resources are open and reflects well on what was a real team effort and a development that I think breaks the mould in Scottish education at least.

And finally delighted to be chairing next year's conference along with Lou Mycroft and Louise Drumm . Wherever the conference physically happens and I am hoping we can bring it to Glasgow ,  I know it will be very different.

I look forward to shaping it with the ALT team and my co-chairs.

In meantime I have three days off - I mooted this with rest of family,  I am going on a camping trip into my suburban back garden.  Initially, they thought I had finally cracked , but I think they maybe joining me. Now is the time to think differently folks.







A week in learning technology #Clickview #OER20⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog


So update we ran 10 webinars last week and over 250 staff tuned in .Between the learning tech and library team we dealt with over 1000 inquires through help desks and social media.  We now have around 700 staff across teaching and support with an active zoom account and we look good to go. 

In between the full on workload I managed to support a Clickview Online Conference presenting to some 418 colleagues across UK. It is worth checking out video, not for my input , but for the excellent overview of ClickViewYou will find out in session how we are using ClickView - many of our own staff have not yet embedded this in their teaching.  That's the next target - we have just started rolling out Click-view Training . I am publishing this a bit prematurely simply to show a workshop how to embed publicly available click-view content . 


In this current week ..

We’ve worked out that the wider community need some Zoom training so we are opening that up - offering free seats to the public - to make sure staff in front line services are confident Zoom users. We will open up our subsequent offers too.

I wonder what other colleges and universities could open up for to colleagues across public sector - we are now living in a remote working, on-line world.

 Our own programme is expanding, having covered key communication channels, we are adding ClickView Training and for some Microsoft Teams training and we’ve added an online booking system - to make sign up easier.
 And we are planning on building around a community of practice https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teach-online while promoting the bridge initiative from CDN and jisc . Tomorrow we are creating a What's On Page to capture more of the on-line events and training that are available to the College staff across the UK and beyond.


And I delivered a paper on how we harnessed google sites to deliver a national programme at #oer20 on Wednesday - Blackboard Collaborate this time globally 1200 delegates making this biggest #OER conference yet . Special thanks to my co-presenter Dr Lewis Ross and in the background Dr Julian Hopkins , John Casey and colleagues who supported delivery of this project including Jim Hannigan at SDS . They included a nice platform for delegates to introduce themselves https://oer20.socialbingo.oerconf.org/participants/joe-wilson/ 
I borrowed the meme from Clint Lalonde .

 I'll post later on fabulous online #oer20 experience and some exciting news.
 In meantime this is what's making us laugh this week.




Remote Working Across Large Scottish College⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog

Sunday on a remote beach near Glasgow - self isolating 

At City of Glasgow College, this is what we’ve been busy doing.

Last week, as the College closed to face to face teaching, we jumped from developing more blended approaches to full on , online learning.

Our priority has been working on improving communication between lecturers and their students. It has been a real team effort from shaping the offer to communicating across the College. 

  • We’ve prepared and published guides for teaching staff , support staff and students around all the systems we have in place for remote learning.
  • We’ve changed the way we can be contacted and how we deliver our support services for those who run into technical challenges or simply need some online support.

We’ve always had a rich set of training and support resources around blended learning. To this point they have mainly been used by those who wanted to pioneer new approaches to learning and teaching. Behind the scenes we are refreshing parts of this but mainly we are just reminding folk what is there already.

This week we are rolling out a webinar programme. Two sessions a day, 10-11am and 2-3pm. A cycle of :
  • Reminding staff by running webinars on how to use enquirer, our MIS system, to send emails and sms messages to class groups and individual students.
  • Showing staff who haven’t been using forums inside their Moodle courses. How to set one up and how to make use of it to engage with learners.
  • All sessions delivered by Zoom with additional training for staff on how to use Zoom with their students. We anticipate Zoom is our new face to face.
We can deliver most digital skills remotely. But the digital divide is wide , staff and students don’t all have reliable internet connections or devices capable of coping with webinars. We have some staff who are really just learning what our systems can do for the first time.

Some of this links back into our Moodle and is unavailable to those outwith College but I hope process and some of guides are helpful to others.

Remote learning guides:

Support staff :: Lecturing staff :: Students :: Staff Help guides and videos

Learning Technologies Help

I think this will be similar pattern to most further and higher education institutions. When this process is finished I don't think we will be going back to the bad old world.  

If I had one wish it would be that SQA applied some of the same rules they have just applied to end the School session . Universities seem in main to have found ways to wind down for the year , schools have effectively ended - we need a tidy national way to close off the end of year for students in Colleges across Scotland. 

As an end piece here is a good commentary on what happens when on-line learning goes wrong.  We need to keep expectations realistic .