Stop Motion at its Finest (Guest Teacher Post)

One of the best parts of being a teacher is the collaboration that happens between students, teacher and even schools.  Today I am lucky enough to have a guest teacher (the first of many I hope) publish a post about the use of technology in her classroom.

Tamzin is a teacher of a prep classroom that has 28 students that are 5 and 6 years old.  One of Tamzin's goals for the second half of the year was to assist her students to use technology as a tool that facilitates learning rather than distracting/ detracting from their learning that takes place in her classroom.  So without further ado, this is Tamzin's story.

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I teach 28 amazing students.  One of the best things about teaching for me is the collaboration of students’ minds.  I love teaching the younger students because they are capable of almost anything.  They all have this perfect view of the world that is really special to be a part of.  As a teacher I believe technology is amazing and can facilitate rich learning experiences.  However as the year has gone on, my classroom has fallen victim to what I like to call "technology overload."  

I teach at a technology privileged school.  We have a 1:1 laptop program from years 4 to 7 and in my class alone I have the following devices:

• An interactive whiteboard with dual pens.

• A WiiA Sound field System.

• 2 pc computers.

• 3 iMac computers.

• 2 MacBook Laptops.

• 8 iPads.2 digital cameras.

• 2 video cameras with tripods. 

• A Tape/CD player.

These devices are great and always fun to play with.  However, my first job is to ensure that I immerse the students in my care in rich learning experiences and if this means that all of this technology sometimes needs to take a back seat then so be it.

This year I took on board the idea of Technology Fridays.  The idea of a collaboration day/time made by children for children really interested me.  Often in my class the best learning comes from the dialogue that happens between students; Technology Fridays seemed like the perfect opportunity to facilitate such dialogue.

After talking with Lachlan he helped me set small goals to improve the effectiveness of the learning that technology facilitates in my classroom.  I decided that having students realise that technology can help them collaborate, learn and share ideas would benefit them past the doors of my classroom.  I talked with my students and their ideas of the use of an iPad really shocked me.  For a 5/6 year of child, an iPad is a fun thing you can play games on.

I spent a great deal of time re-evaluating how iPads were used in my classroom.  Having 8 iPads was a privilege and not only that a way to show students that these devices can facilitate learning and fun at the same time.

Over the coming weeks I worked with my students to brainstorm our favourite iPad apps.  We looked at why we liked them, what characteristics we liked and what we didn't like.  We discussed why some students like some iPad apps and why some didn't.  The students even began to bring in screenshots of the work they were doing on their iPads at home.  Before we knew it, we had a wall in the classroom plastered with evidence of iPads in our life.  The best part? Parents even started asking to come to technology Fridays because of the discussions that were happening about how iPads can help us learn at school.

One of the tasks we were required to complete was a student retell of the creation story.  Before I had a chance, a group of students decided that it would be great if they could use iPads to retell the story.  Another amazing thing about teaching is seeing the fire of learning blazing in your students.  During the next Technology Friday we developed what we call "Stop Motion at its Finest."

The students had the idea that they would create a movie about the creation story.  We brainstormed how we could do this.  Some students wanted to animate their movie, others wanted to act.  Then one day one of the quietest girls in my class stood up and placed her picture on our iPad wall.  It was a screen capture of a stop motion movie her and her dad had made using an app called stop motion studio about her princess teddy bear.  The class fell silent as they looked at her picture.  This girl stood in front of the class and talked about how you take lots of photos using the iPad's camera and put them all together and they play as a movie.  She talked about how you can use anything at all and then you slowly move it.  The class listened in silence and when this girl was done they all turned to me and said "We're doing that!"

I immediately investigated the app and distributed to our class iPads.  I then used the rest of Technology Friday to explore the app.  I found that it is important for the students to be able to play with their technology before redefining their learning goals.  We came together as a class and discussed how to use the app and made a small video of the students in our class.  We came up with rules and cheats and discussed what we liked and didn't like about the app.  In the space of 1 and 1/2 hours we were experts on how to make a stop motion video on the iPad.

Stop Motion Studio for iPad
Easy to use, even a 5 year old could do it!

Before we began on our creation story, I immersed the students in a range of print and digital texts.  We explored age appropriate stop motion movies and picked out our favourite parts of each.  Immediately I began to see a definite style among the students.  They were making the learning their own and slowly the technology they were using was becoming invisible and the learning was driving their investigations.

I assisted students to break into groups and we began to storyboard our movies.  The students decided it would be best to work on a part of the movie and put it all together at the end.  Each group talked with each other and the class came up with 4 steps that would help them all complete their movies.

1. Work in small groups to storyboard their part of the movie.
2. Discuss what materials they would need to make their objects needed for the stop motion movie.
3. Work together to create their objects.
4. Collaborate with other groups to see if any objects could be used in other groups' movies to save time.

Students working together to create their storyboards
The learning was the students, they created it; they owned it!

Students then worked out the roles of their team members to assist them in filming their movie. E.g. director, speaker, the mover and the creator.  When they had created their objects, I allowed then to complete their movies with as little teacher instruction as possible.  I facilitated early discussions and encouraged them to work out their problems amongst their peers.  All in all, students loved the idea of being directors and were capable of solving any problems they were confronted with.  I believe the clear expectations we outlined in Technology Fridays prior to students creating their movies students to focus on their learning rather than the device and app.

Students were always given time to reflect with the entire class.  This allowed for the building of common understandings and the sharing of problems.  Students helped each other rather than running to the teacher for the teacher to solve their problems for them.  They discussed how to solve problems such as bad lighting, shadows on their work and blurry pictures.  Some of my boys even made a stand for the iPad so it would move when filming out of blocks.

Very quickly it became the students’ project, not mine.  They owned their learning and it was purposeful for them.  The focus was on them and not me. After they were finished we glued their posters together and hung them in the classroom.  I have added their work and the final movie below.

The finished student created posters
The students glued all the objects they made together to make posters of the creation story.

Do you believe it is important for students to own their learning?

How do you facilitate learning through technology in your classroom?

Feel free to leave me a comment, I would gladly answer any questions, you can even ask my students questions.  Sharing and collaborative learning is one of the best parts of being an educator and the learning should definitely not stop here.

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Lino - Brainstorming online together

I am lucky enough to have another group of students volunteer to write another on my blog about the work we are doing in class. So sit back relax and enjoy their post. 

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We have well and truly begun our investigations into heroes. We have been working hard on deconstructing the difference between heroes in fantasy and heroes in real life. 

Together we have come up with two categories to label these types of heroes. 

1. The stereotypical superheroes/heroines 

2. Role models. 

We were lucky enough to be introduced to a tool called lino during one of our Technology Friday sessions.  We all fell in love with this tool because of what it allows us to do and how easy it is to use.

As the website says, 

'lino is a cloud-based service that gives you a label canvas on the Internet for freely posting, viewing, and moving labels.' 

To us as a class, it provides us with a way of placing Post-it like notes onto a collaborative board and brainstorming our ideas together. We have posted links to two examples of how we have used this tool in class to facilitate our learning. Feel free to add to the wall and collaborate with us. We would love your input!

As you can see Mr Hull or a student asks a question in the top left and each student/group/visitor responds to the question. The first example was done in class as we discussed in groups our answers and thought to the questions given to us.

This was done before posting online and allowed us to work and interact in person and then discuss the data collected from the information we had posted. The second board was done for 'homework' and we came together the next day to discuss what we had posted and used the data to inform our interactions with others and the answers we came up with.

Lino is free and easy to use.  We expect we will continue using it in the future to help us organise the data we need during our investigations.  Another skill it helps us develop is our knowledge of labelling the work we do.  As you can see from our examples, we label the work with the group we are in and the name we use.  Although this is not very hard, it helps us begin to understand how labelling our work can assist us in developing portfolios for learning.

So please, comment on our baords and answer our questions.  we would love to see your persective.  Remember to be responsible and post appropriate answers.  Any help you can give us is greatly appreciated.

BOARD ONE 

http://linoit.com/users/lachhull/canvases/Stereotypes%20of%20Heroes 

BOARD TWO

http://linoit.com/users/lachhull/canvases/Who%20is%20a%20Hero%2FRole%20Model%3F 

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Gaming and Learning 'Kinect' in the Classroom

Well the 2012 school year is in full swing.  This year I'm teaching grade 5/6; a multi-age classroom full of 31 unique students.   We have just completed week 2 of Term 1. A highlight of our 2 weeks together would be the implementation of our new XBOX 360 Kinect.

Using the Kinect in the classroom has enabled me to begin to harness the culture of my students and embed it in the educational concepts I wish to teach them.  Upon reflection, I have noticed that concepts of game design can promote a positive classroom environment and inform my practices as a facilitator of student learning.

For example, when reflecting with my students of our use of the Kinect in our classroom, we brainstormed the following positive aspects when using the technology:

• When playing on the Kinect we have the ability to fail, pick ourselves up again and work together to succeed.
• We can all play the game our way.  Just because we're different doesn't mean we can't achieve the same goal.
• We can try new tactics when we play games, we can experiment with outcomes and try again if our efforts end in disaster.
• We can experience each others thinking.  "What I might do to achieve a goal may be totally different but just as valid as the person next to me.  We're all different, that's what makes it fun."

I believe that:

• Gaming approaches to education present an excellent opportunity to engage students in activities both familiar and unfamiliar.
• Using gaming technologies such as the XBOX Kinect system assist children in establishing links between existing interests, skills and personal knowledge.
• Gaming builds a connection between the educational contexts of the home and school environments, promoting the immersion of children in relevant, real life experiences. 
• Gaming creates avenues for collaboration between students regardless of their gaming ability.

As a teacher I have watched and noted how the use of the Kinect has helped strengthen and even connect bonds between students in and outside of the classroom.  Because the Kinect can be multi-player, it provides students with scenarios where they may be playing with a student who they do not normally interact with. Regardless of their former interactions, in every instance students will team up with a partner and exert themselves to achieve the high score.

2 weeks in and we negotiate when and why the Kinect is booted up and engaged with in the classroom.  So Far we have played Kinect adventures and Dance Central 2.  Both games give students a clear understanding of what is needed of them to complete levels and objectives with minimal instruction time.  The games allow for failure and prompt students with helpful tips even simplifying the expectations of the player if things are a little difficult.

Using the Kinect in the classroom
Students work together to achieve a common goal.

To me I have noticed 3 things that students appreciate when playing video games that I can use to inform my teaching practice:

1. Give students clear, explicit and unchanging expectations when I set them a task.
2. Give students the freedom to achieve a goal/task with an approach that is comfortable for them.
3. Provide help/simplify the task if students find it too difficult but don't change the expectation/goal set in step 1.

I look forward to continuing to use the Kinect in our classroom. Stay tuned for some student posts about how we incorporate these 2 games into our weekly classroom schedule.  If you use the Kinect in your classroom or any other video game software I would love to hear how you use it and what impact it has had on your students and their learning.  Leave a comment below and share the learning!

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TECHNOLOGY FRIDAYS! Made for Children by Children

TECHNOLOGY FRIDAYS!
My students wanted to develop a space of time we set aside each week to learn how to use ICLT's in our classroom.

I have stated previously that I work with a class of 26 students.  Over the course of the year I have developed a massive amount of respect for the 5-year-old learners in my classroom.  As expected, we encounter technology in our classroom every day.  We experience it in our daily routines, we experience it as we negotiate our classroom behaviours  (Read Me!) and we experience it in our learning.

Our school has put an enormous amount of money into Information Communication and Learning Technologies (ICLT’s) for our classrooms.  In my classroom alone I have:

2 Desktop Computers.

2 Laptops.

6 Mini Laptops.

1 Dual Pen Interactive Whiteboard.

2 iPod Touch devices.

2 Flip Video Cameras.

1 Digital SLR Camera.

2 iPad 2’s.

2 Webcams.

1 Wii.

Wireless Internet to all devices.

However, having this many ICLT’s in my classroom doesn’t ensure that my children will be technology literate by the time they leave my classroom. From experience, I think sometimes educators and educational planners can loose sight of the teaching and learning that needs to happen with these devices for them to become effective tools of learning.  About 15 weeks ago, I was working with my students to see how they thought we could improve learning in our classroom through technology.  It was at this time a quiet girl in my class said something that changed the way technology is used in my classroom.

“Don’t you think there is just too much?” A small voice chimed in. “Don’t you think there is too much technology in our classroom, it’s a bit confusing.” I looked at this child and immediately the rest of the students in my class started supporting her. It was like a mutiny against the use of technology in our classroom.  I was dumbfounded, until I asked” How do we stop making it confusing then?”

What happened next was amazing.  For a solid day I worked with my 26, 5 year old students to negotiate how we as a community can make technology less confusing in the classroom.  We negotiated how technology was used, when it was used, when we should be using it and when we shouldn’t be using it.  We negotiated what we wanted to be using technology for and what we wanted to see happen in the future with technology.

Then a boy said something that changed Fridays in our classroom.

“Can we have a day each week that we use to learn how to use computers and stuff?”  The class went silent and I found myself asking the same question in my head.  Why Not? I said.  We negotiated a day of the week that was easy to implement the learning of new ICLT’S and refine our understandings of old ones.

Behold the creation of

 TECHNOLOGY FRIDAYS! 

On Technology Fridays we spend the morning session of our day finalising any work left over from the week.  Then from11:30am on a Friday all we do until 3:00pm is learn how to use different pieces of technology, apps, websites, etc. We split into mini groups and are assigned mini projects that relate to the ICLT we are learning.

For example with the COMIC BOOK! App on the iPad we negotiated the rules of its use, learned its features, taught everyone in the group how to use it and then made a short comic book with it.  Before we rotate groups and ICLT’s we show the class what we made and explain to them the expectations the group had when using the app.  We spend approximately 30 - 40 minutes on each ICLT.  TECHNOLOGY FRIDAYS have assisted us in making ICLT’S invisible in our classroom.  The learning promoted on this day has become an integral part of our everyday learning. 

This post is a sign of respect to my students who have taken charge of their learning and developed a time for them to build on and share their understandings of ICLT in their lives.  We hope to share their resources with other students to promote effective ICLT use in classrooms across the world. 

Our first resource is below.  If you’ve ever wanted to used Little Bird Tales in your classroom this might help remind your learners of what each of the buttons mean.  It is made by children for children.  We hope you enjoy it. 


"Little Bird Tales Prompts"

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Class Dojo: Building Positive Classrooms in Realtime

Everything we do is behaviour.  I sometimes struggle to understand my own behaviour and I have had years of practice at monitoring, assessing and managing it.  One thing I have noticed as a teacher is that once you put a class of children together, everything is multiplied.

I have questioned myself many times on the fairness of pushing 26 or so students into a classroom context and expecting them to manage and negotiate their own behaviours.  Teachers do the best they can to outline expected behaviours and social standards of classrooms, schools and the greater societal contexts.  However, even the best teacher can't read the minds of each and every student in their class (if you can, call me, because we need to talk).  It can be hard to manage the behaviour of all students at all times, especially if their not sure of what is expected of them.

I have always believed that technology should be invisible in the classroom.  It should be something that just happens, not something that has to happen.  I also believe that when implementing things into the classroom, an excellent teacher negotiates his/her expectations with their class and behaviour expectations are no different.

I found Class Dojo by sheer luck and implemented it's flexible program into my classroom with the guidance of 26 five year old children.  For a while I had been looking for a pieces of technology that would allow me to monitor student behaviour as well as providing students with instant feedback.  Class Dojo does both of these things and more.

The interface is easy to use, there is a step by step tutorial on how to use the program on your internet browser and the best feature of all is that it is free!  Once you have signed up, the website asks you to add a class and input your students names.  From there you can assign them a cute looking monster or arrange to add a picture of them to make it more personal.  My favourite feature is being able to use my smartphone as a remote to award positive or negative behaviours.

Once your class is added, the program asks you to create positive behaviours (these are green) and negative behaviours (these are red).  There are simple icons that are tied to each behaviour you make.  I have found that there are enough of them to assign to nearly any behaviour you can think of.

For me , this is one of the coolest tools I have come across, and after testing it now for over 2 months, it is the coolest thing my students have encountered.  Class Dojo rewrote our classroom behaviour system.  It allowed us to sit down as a class and negotiate what we wanted rewarded as positive behaviours and what we wanted rewarded as negative behaviours.  All 26 students were participants in this process and it allowed for each student to have a voice and develop an understanding of how to behave in the classroom context.

We spent hours on negotiating what a "good/positive" choice was and what a "bad/negative" choice was.  My class negotiated the language we would use when creating behaviours and committed themselves to creating an environment that was safe and where each member knew what was expected of them.  I was blown away by the deep discussion 5 year olds were having over what constituted a positive behaviour to them. I developed deep respect for them as learners and community members.  They now owned their behaviour, they owned the positive and negative consequences; its rewards, and most of all they respected each other because of it.

Our classroom behaviours are simple yet effective.  They are student decided and worded.  The technology didn't rule their decisions, it guided them and assisted them in becoming everyday expectations rather than punishments.

Our Class Behaviours
100% Student Negotiated, 100% Student Owned.

Another feature of Class Dojo is its ability to provide instant behaviour feedback to students. Other than the sounds played when a behaviour is made, or its visual pop ups, the program provides interactive behaviour graphs that show audiences the behaviours recorded for a given period. I was astounded when my class asked to see their graphed data.

When we first started the graph was approximately 50/50 in regards to positive and negative behaviours made.  My class were distraught and accused the program of recording their data wrong.  It was unbelievable to 26, 5 year old students that they had made so many negative decisions.  Since then we have had many discussion about how to improve our behaviour making, with the goal to make our graph 100% positive behaviours. I am pleased to say that since the beginning of this month we are at 90% positive behaviours.

Class Report for October
It's amazing to watch students negotiate how they can make more positive behaviours with informed knowledge of what they need to change.

In my eyes that is all I could wish for. No one is perfect; especially when you're 5 years old and you're still exploring your behaviours and their consequences.  I have promised an ice block to each child when we get 100% positive behaviours and I'm sure the day will come when this happens. When it does, I will congratulate my students for their efforts.  Until then, I am just happy with them owning their own behaviour.

My hat goes off to the creators of Class Dojo.  The most effective technology in classrooms is that which is unseen until it is needed to be used.  Class Dojo is one of those technologies.  It isn't 100% perfect, but the influence it has on students and their ability to negotiate and own their behaviour is priceless.  Myself and 26 students want to thank you, we look forward to using this program in our classroom for sometime to come.

If you would like to use Class Dojo in your classroom, click on this link > CLASS DOJO.  You won't regret it!  Share it with your friends and peers as well.  Technology such as this needs to be shared.

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