Rolling the Dice with Teacher Professional Development

I am lucky to come into contact with some really special educators. Every day I see the most fantastic and energetic teachers helping their students, helping each other and helping themselves. Today we have some of these special teachers as guest bloggers. Annie Barton and Hayley Schirmer are two teachers who have developed a fun, interactive and inclusive way of developing teacher's confidence in the touch and swipe environment. We have invited them to guest blog their story on providing professional development to their staff.

Rolling the Dice with Teacher Professional Development

In January this year we took on the role of eLearning Leaders at Melbourne’s newly opened Albert Park College. Our aim for the year was to show and encourage teachers to transform learning and teaching through the meaningful use of iPads, and also to share our passion for using technology creatively to increase student engagement.

Albert Park College has a strong focus on professional development. Each week staff meet to engage in professional development focusing on particular areas such as differentiation, e5 Instructional Model and eLearning. Over the year, we have delivered a range of interactive professional learning sessions aimed at encouraging teachers to become immersed in the digital age.

Our biggest challenge was getting teachers to think about how apps can be used for more than just a token activity, but rather, to combine multiple apps to meet lesson outcomes. The following concept was born,

App + App + App = Outcome

In July this year at our annual two-day conference, we presented a session to staff with the intention of clearly demonstrating the possibilities of combining apps to meet a lesson outcome.

After lots of brainstorming we finally had the idea!! To use dice to help show how easy it is to combine apps and have a little fun! We used three dice, each dice represented a particular e5 principle; explore, explain or elaborate. It was easy to develop lists of apps for each e5 principle, but we narrowed them down to six apps for each dice with a focus on introducing new apps.

Explore – QR Reader, Notability, Twitter, Pinterest, Pulse and Wikinodes

Explain – Evernote, Over, Haiku Deck, Skitch and Messages

Elaborate – ReelDirector, Storify, iMovie, StripDesign and inFlowChart

Now to make the dice come to life…We printed each app as a sticker and manually created each of the dice. Little did we know our great idea would become hours of work. 40 people x 3 dice x 6 sides = 720 stickers to be placed carefully on each side of the dice and in the right combinations! That almost sent us crazy!

In addition to the dice, we created 'Idea Cards' for each app, giving suggestions for how an app could be used across curriculums. This was used to help teachers stimulate creativity and ideas and extend this concept after the conference.

During the workshop we encouraged staff to consider an outcome for one of their lessons. Then, they needed to roll the dice and come up with a combination of apps that could be used to meet the lesson objective. This idea encouraged our teachers to consider the spontaneity of combinations of apps. If one app didn’t particularly meet the lesson requirements teachers were encouraged to roll a dice again.

What occurred during our session was teachers working together developing lessons with technology in the forefront of their minds.  At the end of our sessions teachers had written a lesson that they could put straight into action when they returned to school, some even begin this process during our session.

As part of our objective for App + App + App= Lesson, we encouraged teachers to implement a culture of planning lessons around using apps that meet a certain criteria, rather than specific apps. We also encouraged teachers to encourage their students to use apps they felt met the outcome, rather than relying on the teacher knowing how to use every single app of the app store. We want to develop a culture of students teaching teachers, and students to think creatively to choose the best way for them to produce work for an outcome, rather than teachers limiting the only options.

Our workshop was really successful. We had teachers implementing their planning the very next week in classes, and students were excited that they no longer were told which apps to use for what. They had the freedom to conceptualise the product for each learning outcome.

We encourage you to give it a try at your school - what feedback do your teachers have about these ideas? How does it open up possibilities for lessons and outcomes in your subject areas? You can use any apps for this activity - and could even use it in the classroom with your students. We would love to hear from you, contact us via email or twitter.

Annie Barton 

anniebarton@albertparkcollege.vic.edu.au

@anniebarton0

Hayley Schirmer

hayleyschirmer@albertparkcollege.vic.edu.au

@schirmer_hayley

Content Apps: Extending Student Learning

There are some apps that I classify as content apps. These types of apps tend to be quite specialized and content driven. The beauty of "content apps" is that the very best ones present information in rich multimedia formats. These can be great to use as the basis for small units of work. 

The UNHCR app is one "content app" that I particularly like. It tells the story of three young refugees. Each refugee from a different country. The narrative is told based on the decisions that the reader makes as they are presented with different scenarios in the journey to safety. Combined with a series of other apps it is a fantastic way to to build empathy within your classroom. This provides a focal point for developing cultural understanding and the sharing of cultural traditions. 

This activity will work with small groups of shared iPads. Working in groups, the students are able to select appropriate apps and tools to support their learning. Those suggested are provided as a guide only. This approach allows the students to negotiate learning tasks with their teacher to ensure a student choice and a student voice.

The knowledge captured also facilitates a student centric construct of social, cultural and political knowledge. This is a pertinent exercise in the current political climate. 

The second activity allows teachers to scaffold research tasks for young learners in historical and critical studies. The Vincent Letters App is a fantastic starting point for learning more about Vincent van Gogh. It includes high definition images of his work and numerous informative videos. Students can do all or chose to complete only a couple of these activities.

The historical knowledge also facilitates a student appreciation of the constraints and artistic struggles that van Gogh experienced. This is even better when the students are also attempting to complete a painting using a theme or subject matter that van Gogh explored.

Both of these activities can be easy modified for many different issues, topics or subject areas.

         

                      Researching Refugees                                       Researching Vincent van Gogh

Teacher 101 iPad Sessions

I have recently been asked to provide a number iPad sessions for teachers. I had one school where they had recently bought a large number of iPads and wanted to start from scratch. Another had a 1:1 Program in a particular year group but wanted their colleagues to get an understanding of the potential of iPads in the classroom. I was able to use this Teacher ToolKit idea for both groups.



Another one of the ideas I have been using was one that I borrowed from a talented friend and inspirational teacher in New Zealand - Allanah King @AllanahK. She published her iPad Bingo idea on her blog a couple of months ago. I have used it numerous times since and it has been a success each time. I make sure that every time I use it I credit her with the concept. Here it is in it's latest incarnation updated for iOS 7. Make sure you visit Allanah's blog for a heap of other great stuff.

Make a copy and put your own school name or crest at the top. It is always good for staff to see resources specifically designed for them.

Schools have also used this as part of Bootcamps for iPad Rollouts with students. They love it as well.

Teacher Documented Workflows

Teachers in our system are documenting iPad workflows in an attempt to help clarify the learning process. This has been invaluable for those schools moving to a BYOD model. Many of these workflows also make use of our Google Apps for Education for the sharing of resources and collecting of student work.

These are examples of individual workflows within a set environment. These are often the result of unsuccessful experimentation. The idea is for teachers to take what works for them and modify others to fit their environment and their classroom practice.

Student Documented Workflows for the iPad

Students love to share how they do things. This is especially true when they are working on iPads. I have started to collect and document some of these workflows to share with other classes and other schools. These are all taken directly from my conversations with Yr 4, 5 and 6 kids. All I have done is to put them in a similar format. What is interesting for me is how reflection of both the process and the product is so important for them. The student's talk about moving full circle so if they are not satisfied with the product they can modify or enhance it further.

I see these being used two ways. The first is as a simple visual prompt for students. The top half of the sheet is perfect for this. They get to see a quick process. They get to see how it could work. The best thing about this is that people will see these and go, "That's good but if I was going to do this I would use.......".

If students and or teachers want a more detailed explanation than the step-by-step instructions are available.

Print them off, fold it in half and use as posters in your class. I hope you find these useful.