Participatory Culture, Hybrid Reality, and the Digital Native: The Reality of our Learners

This past week we had the first of a series of Tech Cafes which allows for an informal setting to share ideas, both academic and practical, around the implementation of technology in the classroom. Our first session's topic was about the reality of our learners as digital natives and how this might be reflected in our classroom practices. The description for the session was:

"In an attempt to better understand our students and how their understanding of the world is different than that of the digital immigrant, I will share some of the foundational insights I have gained during the course of my degree in Digital Experience Innovation."

Following is the recording from the session. Because this was a session about technology we of course had technical issues. The quality of the video is not great, but I have tried to splice in the slides during the worst of it. The camera has since been retired as a pile of plastic shards.

WeVideo is Nearly Perfect for the Classroom

As we continue to modify and redefine our classrooms to better reflect the skills our students need in the 21st Century, the ability to edit and remix video is key. I am lucky to be in a school that has Adobe Premier on every school computer in the building, as well as a fantastic Communications Technology department that teaches many of our students how to use it well. With all of this, Premier can still be difficult and slow to use. Enter WeVideo.

WeVideo is a web-based video editor that uses your Google Drive (and a lot of other cloud storage products) as the source for your video clips that you can then edit. I have been using WeVideo with my Grade 12 College students in the creation of movie trailers and mini documentaries. WeVideo works very well on desktop, laptops, and Chromebooks. They have recently launched an iOS 8 app that I have not yet had a chance to use.

Why it's Great!

WeVideo is perfect for the classroom for several reasons. The first, and most important, reason is that it allows students to choose from three different user interfaces; Beginner, Intermediate, and
Advanced. The Beginner interface functions much like iMovie, but with a more streamlined interface that makes dropping in video and audio clips easy. For my grade 12s this was an excellent place to start while they were learning how to import clips from their Google Drive. By the end of the first half hour of use nearly every one of my students had progressed to the Intermediate interface as it allowed them more control and flexibility.

The Intermediate interface starts to look more like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier. The large video "bubbles" what are used in the Beginner interface are replaced with two video timelines/tracks, an audio track, and a narration track. Many of my students used this interface for the simple trailer assignment, but when they moved on to the more complex documentary assignment they switched to the Advanced interface.

The Advanced interface is similar to the Intermediate except that you have more control. Students can now lock tracks and adjust the volume of the entire track line. You can also add new audio and video tracks.

But it's not only the interface that makes this a valuable tool. WeVideo provides a large library or themes, music, transitions, and sound effects which help students produce more polished work, but, more importantly, it cut down on the time they spent searching for these items online.

Once a project is finished, WeVideo allows students to export the video at up to 720p video quality for free (with the WeVideo logo in the corner and at the end of the clip). Students can pay to export without these limitations.

One Thing Missing

As far as I can tell, there is only one thing missing; WeVideo does not allow your to trim sections out of the middle of a video that you imported. If a student wanted a section from the beginning of a clip and from the end, but not the middle, they had to import the full clip twice, and then drag the beginning and end of the clip to the section they desired. By no means a difficult task, but a strange function to be missing.

Also, we occasionally ran into a small glitch. Sometimes when a student went to upload a clip they had added to their Google Drive, it would not show up. The very rare time this happened, students just disconnected and reconnected their Drive (easily done from the upload window) to solve the problem.

(SAMR) Modification Example of Classroom Use

While studying documentaries in grade 12, we discuss how filmmakers are able to create a point-of-view in their films and that those points-of-view do not necessarily represent the truth. To explore this point, students are tasked with creating a documentary about our school and present a particular point-of-view about the school.

First, students are not told anything about the assignment except that it will be about the school. Students are paired up and sent out around the school to take pictures and video of the school and the student experience. Students then upload all of their material into a shared Google Drive folder that I shared on Classroom. Once all of this material is captured, students are given the assignment. They develop the point-of-view they want to express and are only able to use the footage and images that were collected by the class.

The one trick that you need to know to do something similar is that WeVideo will only take photos and images from the student's Google Drive. Students can add the shared folder to their Drive by going to the initial folder link and, while signed in to Google, click on the button on the top right titled "Add to Drive".

This assignment is a lot of fun because students are able to show what is great about our school (most common) or what is not so great.

Update

One issue that my class has run into since I published this post is the amount of render time permitted for a free personal account. In order to encourage people to buy a WeVideo subscription, free accounts are limited to 7.5 minutes of render time per month. This means that if you want your students to export their video so that it can be played outside of the WeVideo editor, you can only assign 7.5 minutes (without the ability to revise their videos after feedback within that month). 

This has several broader implications as a high school educator. First, if teachers throughout your school start using WeVideo in their class, you may have many students without render time for your course. Second, if you do decide to purchase a license to use, all of the education licenses come with 50 included users. This does not seem to be in line with secondary school educators who will typically teach between 70 and 90 students each semester. I am beginning to notice a real gap in the marketplace for software geared towards high schools.

Mandate Update- PD Funding and Grants

I wanted to take a minute and update the mandate of this blog. Although the primary focus will still the integration of Google Classroom and GAFE into a one-to-one device classroom, I have recently been approved for two PD grants that will become part of this blog.

The first is a grant distributed by the Ontario Teacher's Federation. The approved proposal is comprised of a multi-disciplinary team of teachers from my school including science, computer engineering, Canadian World Studied, Food and Nutrition, and English. We will be using the funds to purchase key devices that will facilitate the integration of other, board provided technologies into the classroom. We hope to provide some valuable insight which will be published on this blog and on the OTF website.

I was also approved for school board sponsored PD to work with a teacher from a different school in our board. We will be investigating the use of GAFE to better allow for collaboration between students and teachers in a decentralized, highly independent learning situation, like an Interdisciplinary Studies Course, or during Independent Study projects. As suggested by my Principal, we may also look at how this could form the basis for asynchronous professional learning communities among staff throughout the
board and province.

I am very excited to tackle these new projects and hope that they will create valuable resources to be shared here.

Thanks for reading!

Adobe Voice is iPad Magic

If you are looking for an app that makes the purchase of an iPad worth while, look no further than Adobe Voice. Not only is this app simple enough for young children to use, but it is versatile enough that one of my Master's classmates uses it with great success; and it's FREE!

The App

The app is a very simple presentation creator which not only allows you to attach images, photos, or text, but also voice recordings to each slide. The app has a great variety of good looking themes, easy to use templates, and background music. Here is a video that shows the app in action.

Why it is AMAZING?

This app allows weaker or younger students to follow different types of stories which prompt them what to put on each slide. It also allows more advanced students to create presentations from scratch.

How I'm Using it.

I have been using Adobe Voice with my grade 10 English students while studying poetry. We have been working on developing deductive arguments. My students have been struggling with connecting textual support to their topic sentence/thesis. With poetry they work at identifying the purpose of a poem inductively and then trying to explain the purpose deductively. Instead of having them write their analysis, which they don't want to do and i'd rather not read, they create an Adobe Voice presentation in the same or less time that it would take them to write the paragraph. It is far more engaging and easier to share with the class.

My colleague was also very impressed with Adobe Voice after she used it with a very low functioning grade 9 English class. The students are reading at a grade 3-5 level and have a very difficult time sharing their ideas. They were able to use Adobe Voice after only a short introduction and created a presentation in less than an hour. This has allowed the students to be successful in an area that they have experienced little success in the past.

Update

The current version of Adobe Voice will now allow you to download the video to your iPad to then be used and shared in any way you like.

Using Google Classroom as an Assignment Dropbox

While in discussion with my colleague Nicholas Keller, he showed me an alternative use for Google Classroom that for him, as a Cooperative Education teacher, helps him stay organized and in sync with his students who are working throughout his community.

Because of the scheduling of Cooperative classes, Nick has decided to create three different Classrooms for his one course. Each Classroom deals with a different stage of the class, including Pre-placement, Logs and Journals, and Integration assignments. This unique use of Classroom has several benefits and disadvantages.

Benefits

1. By using the assignment dropbox feature of Classroom and by only having the assignments listed in the Stream, students are easily able to see what needs to be completed before and during their placements. Students are able to see what needs to be done and what they might have missed for the entire semester all within two or three page scrolls. 
2. One of the challenges for cooperative education teachers is managing the paperwork of students completing their work logs. Traditionally, this was done by having students hand in paper copies of the appropriate work when they are at the school. This can quickly become an organizational nightmare and can allow students to slip through the cracks. By using Classroom as a dropbox, teachers can quickly and easily see which students have not completed work and can then react accordingly, all with one click.
3. The thing that struck me most about this use of Classroom is that it doesn't utilize the Stream function in the same way that I have been using it in class. One of my main criticisms of the Stream is that material that students may need repeated access to quickly moves down the stream with daily updates. Using Classroom as an assignment dropbox, and for nothing else, keeps the assignments top of mind (and page) for students.
4. Not only will it keep material top of mind for students, but it also allows for the same Classroom to be used year after year. It should be nothing more then removing the students who completed the course and adding the new students to reset the Classroom and make it easily adaptable to the new semester.

Disadvantages

1. Because Classroom does not allow you to reorder Stream posts, if you want to change an assignment or just the order in which they appear in the Stream, you would have to delete everything and start again.
2. By not utilizing the Announcement functionality, and the fact that Classroom does not allow you to embed a calendar or create multiple Streams for one Classroom, students will have to go to more then one place to manage their course work.
3. Marking with a rubric is still an issue as there has been no functionality update to make this possible.

The simplicity of this approach and the ease by which teacher and student should be able to manage complete and incomplete work is an interesting and useful model for anyone in a highly independent and dynamic teaching environment. Thanks for sharing Nick!

On a side note, has anyone run into the problem of Classroom switching a student from one Classroom to another? This has happened to me twice so far this semester. 

Five Things You Should Know Before Using Google Classroom

If you are considering using Google Classroom as a part of your courses, here are five essential things you will want to know.

1. Google Classroom is a black box

Maintaining regular communication with parents is a constant challenge for teachers. Other online platforms I have used in the past made the arduous task of keeping 80+ parents informed on what is going on in their child's class a simple task. I could send parents a link the my course calendar, website, or wiki and that was the end of my effort. Google Classroom does not allow this to happen. You won't even be able to share Classroom with your colleagues or student success teachers without adding them as a student. I understand that privacy is the central driver behind this policy, but in my opinion, this will prevent Classroom from receiving mass adoption.

2. Google Classroom is not a course management system.

If you are looking for a place to set up units and prepare folders of resources ahead of time, Google Classroom is not for you; Google Drive is definitely for you, but not Google Classroom. Drive will allow you to set up files for units and plan resources ahead of time. If you want your students to have access to all of your files from day one you can share the folder with your students. You could share the folder on Classroom, but do not think of Classroom as a course website, but rather as a Facebook news feed or a Google stream.

3. Google Classroom is all about the here and now.

Google Classroom's Stream will make it easy for students to find exactly what they need for a particular moment in time. The teacher needs to update the Stream often so that the relevant information for class that day is at the top of the stream, ready to go. If you are in a one-to-one device environment, this can help simplify your day significantly.

This focus on the present can also cause issues. If, like me, you are planning on using Google Classroom daily you may find the format of the Stream frustrating. Throughout a unit I will provide information sheets and links that students need to access throughout the next couple of weeks. This information quickly gets pushed down the stream and ends up requiring scrolling and page refreshing (which has recently resulted in the page automatically scrolling all of the way to the top) to find exactly what a student needs. Students could "make a copy" of each information sheet, or copy links into their bookmarks, but in reality, this will almost never happen.

4. Assessment in Google Classroom will not work for everyone.

My single biggest frustration, and one of the key selling feature of Classroom, is its handling of assessment files. What I do like is that you are able to send assignment sheets to students with only a few clicks and that you can send a copy of that assignment to each student where it is stored in a folder in their Drive.

The key issue I have is that evaluating the work when it is finished is tailored to a very specific form of assessment. The built in assessment functionality only lets you mark the assignment based on an overall average or point system. Our school system marks with a 4 category, 5 scale rubric. There is no way to set a rubric as a marking schema, and if you do not attach the rubric when you originally create the assignment (perhaps you are co-creating your rubric with the students) you are not able to edit the assignment and add the rubric with the option of giving it to every student.

If, like in my department, you have students hand in work, provide feedback for improvement (without a mark), and then give students time to make changes and resubmit for summative marking, your assignment inbox in Classroom will become a disaster. Material will be listed as done, returned, and resubmitted. Because of this, my ability to comment or add items to their assignment sheets becomes a mixed up mess of commenting and 'making suggestions'. A little more versatility and the ability for teachers to end an assignment would make assessment much more functional for many teachers. 

5. Google Classroom's usefulness is dependent on your use of Google Apps for Education.

If you find that you use a wide range of websites, online tools, and applications, you may find Google Classroom is just another site you need to maintain. But, if you use Google Docs as well as the many other Google Apps, Google Classroom is the place for you. The ease of sharing Docs assignment sheets with each of your students and the ability to easily track who has submitted what and when by looking at the submission history, makes this a great tool. It also makes it very easy to share course content, whether it be a youtube video, a link to a webpage, or a variety of handouts and slideshows. Students will have no good excuse for not finding everything they need.

Gallery Tour Feed Back

A particular challenge that I face as an English teacher, which is further exacerbated by technology, is getting students out of their desks and moving around. I decided this week to incorporate some movement into my class while still using the available technology.

My Grade 10 academic students are working on creating an advertisement for a not-for-profit organization known as Give Them Light. This charity came to their attention after we watched the film Blood Brother. Students were tasked with completing some inquiry questions on what makes a good ad completed through the analysis of not-for-profit advertising focussing on the same issues depicted in the film. Students were then challenged to create their own advertisement for Give Them Light by connecting their analysis, our work on logic, and the character virtues they have been assigned to explore.

To get them out of their seats, students were put in groups and assigned a section of chalkboard in the room. Here the groups identified the success criteria for an effective ad. After 5 minutes, students rotated around the room looking at what other groups had identified. As a class we then co-created a Google Doc listing the most common aspects from the various lists.

We then went to the computer lab (I was monopolizing tech this day). Students pulled up their advertisements on the computer screen and left their device (iPad or Chromebook) on the desk in front open to a blank Google Doc. The class then rotated around the room providing feedback to students based on the success criteria identified in class. This allowed for a great amount of feedback in a short amount of time. Not only did each person receive feedback from 26 people, but they were able to see what others had done in order to learn what they could change in their ad to make it stronger. Finally, the success criteria we created allows me to better tailor my rubric to their understanding of the material covered in class, allowing for a more authentic assessment of what was learned, not what I thought they might learn.

This type of gallery tour could also be easily recreated online without the necessity of two computers each. Simply create and share a Google Slideshow, allow students to upload their ad to a slide, and then use the commenting or speaker notes functionality to do a virtual tour and have students provide feedback.

The physical gallery tour did allow students to get up and move around and also created a bit of excitement as students would group around particularly strong ads and comment out loud.