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All materials used in this unit can be found in this shared Drive folder.
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What were your goals for your lesson/project (Standards)?
International College Hong Kong (Hong Lok Yuen) is an IB World School. As such, we use the curriculum framework of the PYP to develop the whole child as an inquirer, both in the classroom and in the world outside. Like other PYP schools, we teach 6 Units of Inquiry. For my Final Project, I decided to work with the Year 5 teachers and students on their 5th unit, Where We Are in Place and Time.
Working alongside two Year 5 colleagues, we planned 5 weeks of learning engagements for 45 students that we hoped would best enable them to not only understand the central idea,
Geographical features can influence the development of civilizations
but to conceptually apply their learning across different disciplines; in this case English.
Together we came up with a Summative task that was one and the same, meaning we used the content from our UOI (Where We Are in Place and Time), but the structure and genre from our English Scope & Sequence.
The summative assessment task challenged students to research where civilizations have developed in a country, recognising geographical features that have influenced their development. Students were able to collaboratively research their country of choice, but had to independently write in the form of an explanation from their research that included:
- Title (Country)
- Introduction
- Geographical Features (natural and artificial)
- How Geographical Features Influence Where People Live
- The Impact of Changes to Geographical Features
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
The Standards for this unit are:
ISTE Standards
Students:
2 – Communication and Collaboration
a. Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media
b. Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats
3 – Research and Information Fluency
b. Locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media
c. Evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks
4 – Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making
a: Identify and define authentic problems and significant questions for investigation
c: Collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions
5 – Digital citizenship
a. Advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology
b. Exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity
6 – Technology operations and concepts
d: Transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies
Teachers:
2 – Design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments
a. Design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity
b. Develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress
3 – Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
a. Demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations
d. Model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning
4 – Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility
a. Advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources
LANGUAGE SCOPE & SEQUENCE
Viewing and presenting
- Become familiar with a range of ICT programmes to present text effectively and communicate information and ideas.
- Begin to select appropriate ICT programmes to present their material and use them effectively.
All of the above information can be found on the ICT Overview for this unit.
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What tools did you use? Why did you choose this/these tools for this/these task(s)?
Students in Year 5 have access to 2 separate trolleys of MacBooks, each housing roughly 12 MacBooks. Some are MacBook Pros, while others are the original legacy white MacBooks with updated RAM. One of the issues with this setup has been the timetabling of who needs the laptops and when. With Year 6 students currently working on their Exhibition has exacerbated the issue. Some lessons had to be shifted around or changed altogether, even last minute, due to the limitation in number of devices.
An issue that popped up recently is the wifi at school. Over the last few weeks we have been working hard to upgrade our school WiFi network. When the original WiFi access points went in 2 years ago, we had one for every second classroom. However, with the recent growth in the number of devices, we have started to see real problems with this configuration. In response, we upgraded so that every teaching room now has its own access point. It should make it much less likely that neighbors (horizontal as well as vertical) are leaching from the access points. As a result of this work we hope to see fewer connection issues and better performance.
Over the course of the unit we employed many different tools. We first began by creating a video of the explanation of our very own Shirt Machine (based on the YouTube story by Jon Davis). We used the school cameras for this purpose. What may sound easy for some, was quite a challenge for many of the students in the Year 5. In the process of learning how to download the video files we also learned more about recording and the devices that we can easily record on at school; video file sizes and their implications; how to upload the movie files to the school Vimeo account, and where to save and manage the file once we’re done (Google Drive). Students were eager to learn this process and look forward to creating (and editing) more videos for future projects and reflections.
Students in Years 3 to 6 have Google Apps accounts at school. The Year 5 students have had their accounts now for a little over a year. They are comfortable in using Docs and Slides and have a decent understanding for collaborating online with these tools. Google Apps needs no explanation, they just rock.
For the first time students in Y5 had a go at a live populating website like Socrative. They were pretty intrigued to see the results of their short answers immediately populate my short-answer form. I think it is one area of formative assessment that we need to employ more at our school. Easy to create, they can provide teachers with great insight into student thinking, understandings and misconceptions. For our purpose it allowed us to get an idea of which geographical feature students wanted to investigate further. We could have used a Google Form or another online polling site, but we chose this one because I have heard nothing but great things about it. Actually, I just really wanted to give it a go. Plickers is another one I have recently heard about and would like to try that using that in the Early Years at some point.
For research purposes we used Blendspace. (Read more about the use of Blendspace in my Course 1 Final Project.) Blendspace replaced Edcanvas last year and has been a good resource where students can collaborate online and share their research. Blendspace gives you quick access to a bunch of resources such as: YouTube, Google (Images and Web), Flickr, Educreations, Dropbox, Google Drive, and the option to upload your own file or link to a website and more. For this unit, students used it for their summative assessment task to collect and share with each other about the country they have chosen.
Paper by FiftyThree on the iPad Mini was a big hit. If you’re into sketchnoting, that’s one app you should have! Students enjoyed sketching a chosen geographical feature, and taking it one step further, uploaded into their new Thinglink account and tagged their research to their image. Following up on a student request, I used their work to bring it all together here…
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You may wonder why we didn’t choose Google Slides, and that’s a good question. We just thought providing students with a blank canvas may be actually harder for them to complete, this time. Having multiple templates has also been good for differentiation purposes. Those who have needed more support have been able to get it, while those who wanted complete control were able to move ahead and customize the look more suited to their needs. Here is an example of one I quickly made for the purposes of modeling the summative task: Image may be NSFW.
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How did you go about introducing your lesson/project?
To my colleagues: I said “Hey, I need to work with you as I have this HUGE project to do! What’s your next unit? I’m in!”
To the students: The introduction of lessons and the final project was done by myself, with the support of the class teachers. I shared with each class what was going to happen in the unit, regarding ICT, how we would get there and what tools we would be using along the way. I shared out multiple docs on Google Classroom so that students could follow along and always be sure of the learning outcomes for that day. Sometimes this went well, other times not as well as I had hoped. Like anything, it takes practice. But it also served as valuable PD for the 2 teachers I was working with to see how online assignments can be managed.
Using Google Classroom is something that I am really trying to push with staff members at my school. After a couple years of getting staff members to finally transition off Microsoft Word, I have gotten them all to use Google Apps for planning and assessing. Now I’m trying to help them organise their workflow with the help of Classroom and Forms. Big job. My plan is to organise my staff PD on Google Classroom when we return to school after the summer holidays.
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How did the students react?
Telling students that they’re going to be using iPads and MacBooks more frequently in their next unit of inquiry is like winning the lottery for them. I had them at hello…
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Outcome? Did you meet your goals?
If you look at it from the standpoint of reaching out learning objectives in English,
- Become familiar with a range of ICT programmes to present text effectively and communicate information and ideas.
- Begin to select appropriate ICT programmes to present their material and use them effectively.
then by all means, yes we did.
Could it have been better, most likely yes. I have raised some suggestions for next year that I think would help in the unit below. I also believe that if the unit were one or two weeks longer, instead of the 4-5 we had, I think we could have gone a bit further with their work and completed the unit to a greater satisfaction. That’s not to say that we’re disappointed with their final explanations, just that we could have reviewed them one on one and then used the commentary feedback on their student websites to improve their product.
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Evidence of learning?
Please see the video. Many students shared reflections on this unit of inquiry.
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How do/did you plan to share this with your colleagues?
I plan to first share the video with the students and staff in Year 5. I think they will enjoy seeing what was created from all of the footage I have taken. Many were curious as to why I was always recording them while they were working. Over the course of the unit they warmed up more to the camera and were happy to post some reflections by the end. I believe more action like this on the part of staff and ATs will go along way in helping our students, amongst other things, extend their learning beyond the classroom walls.
My plan is also to share this work with Ross Parker, the ICT Director at my school, and then reflect on how the unit went together. Our Senior Leadership Team (SLT) has given the two of us a day (May 20th) to work off campus and we plan to use that time to better structure the integration of ICT into Units of Inquiry across the school (Nursery to Year 6). As this has been my first year in the position, we have learned a lot about where we are as a school and where we need to improve. Some of the discussions we will have in relation to this project should enable us to better structure units from a whole-school standpoint.
I’m sure the SLT would enjoy watching the video and be open to recording and documenting more projects in the future. Considering the Hong Kong education market, and the demand for students to get places, some of the footage recorded could be used for promotional purposes. I imagine a shorter film can be created and put on the school website (#teachICHK) to show the use of ICT being used at our school.
As for staff, I will sit down with the Year 5 team and complete the IB planners with them before the end of May. We will reflect on what went well, what struggles we had and how we can improve this unit next year. There is always room for improvement, and this unit is without it’s faults.
One of the other ways I plan to share with staff is through the school TVs. For communication purposes, we had some of our tech-savvy ICT students from the secondary school budget out, purchase and install multiple flat-screen TVs around the campus. Using Screenly, an online software that runs on the tiny Raspberry Pi, we can broadcast flawless full 1080p HD video, render web content and more. In fact, Screenly can be used for anything from displaying advertisement to live dashboards with system status and in-store infomercials – if you had any! A good way to update the conversations going on around the water cooler.
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What was your greatest learning in this course?
One of the things that grabbed my attention early on in the unit was just how much more scaffolding needs to go on down in the earlier years. We can’t expect them to already know about visual literacy, copyright, video recording and so on in Year 5 if they haven’t been exposed to it earlier on. We need to push some of these outcomes down the line so that by the time they are in Year 5 they are quite inherent. I do know they are exposed to various elements, but with a more structured ICT programme at the school, we can begin to fill in the gaps and move forward as a collective group.
I think being in both classes for extended periods of time has given me a better perspective on my own job and my own challenges ahead. That has been my greatest learning in this course.
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Did this implementation meet the definition of Redefinition?
Substitution
- The computer substitutes for another technological tool, without a significant change in the tool’s function.
For this unit, students initially did research on a geographical feature of their choice using Google Docs. They also filmed themselves presenting their Shirt Machine. Both of these are examples of Substitution.
Augmentation
- The computer replaces another technological tool, with significant functionality increase.
For this unit, we used Google Classroom to share out the learning objectives and provide students with their own copy of lessons with video instructions. Students were able to ‘submit’ their work electronically. This is an example of Augmentation.
Modification
- The computer allows for the redesign of significant portions of a task to be executed.
For this unit, we used iPads to sketch a geographical feature (Paper by FiftyThree) and then uploaded that to Thinglink. We then turned our image into a resource tagged with research on said geographical feature. We then uploaded that Thinglink to our student websites.
Redefinition
- The computer allows for the creation of new tasks, inconceivable without the computer.
In order to begin our summative assessment, we first looked at the work on geographical features (Thinglinks) on our friends websites. For our chosen country, we collaborated together online (Blendspace) and then created an online presentation using emaze. We uploaded that presentation to our website and then began to comment on other’s work, giving them instant feedback on their explanation.
I do believe this fits the bill for this unit and for this group of students at this time. At another school, this may be more appropriate in Year 3 or 4. In others, maybe in 6 or 7. Some of the early challenges made me wonder if we would be able to accomplish everything to be honest. This unit has provided me, and the two teachers I worked with, with good insight and experience going forward.
Is this unit inconceivable without a computer? No. I guess it could be done on paper. But it’s hard to imagine what happens outside of the classroom at the end of the day. Did they go home and collaborate with their friends online? Not sure. Have they tagged resources and made images interactive for people who see their site? Nope. Have they ever posted anything online and asked for feedback? No. So there are various degrees to which Redefinition can suit a specific unit in my mind. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I need to put the SAMR model into practice a few more times to really get a better sense for the stages of progression. But for a first crack at it, I’m pleased.
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What would you do differently next time? What did you learn? (Reflection)
Here are my reflections based on all of the wonderful things we have studied throughout the COETAIL course by headings:
Copyright
Never an easy thing to teach as most of us find it completely confusing. Ask 10 people the same question and you will get 10 answers. What constitutes Fair Use when it comes to using it in our work? This is definitely one area I think all schools could probably spend some PD money on. Even just trying to put my video together I had some memory lapses – can I use this copied YouTube clip in my video? If I’m not 100% sure then how can I explain that clearly to my students? It’s always one issue that puts a burr in my side. In the end I reached out to Vivian on Twitter to get her opinion.
Overall I think we have made some strides in this area at our school, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Students are using Creative Commons for photo images and are understanding why they need to do that. It’s a good start. But this initiative needs to start with the teachers and how they model it to their students in the classroom. When I’m not there, what happens? My guess, Google Images and no Creative Commons. A grassroots level approach beginning at Nursery and Reception needs to include the correct terminology and dialogue when using ICT in the classroom. Like anything, the more the students are exposed to it, the better. They will learn to understand and build off of those experiences.
Digital Citizenship
One of my goals is to integrate the Common Sense Media’s Scope and Sequence into our school’s upcoming ICT Scope and Sequence. Their cross-curricular units spiral to address digital literacy and citizenship topics in an age-appropriate way.
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Originally we didn’t plan to have a detailed S&S, but after spending a year in this position, I have come to the realisation that it’s in everyone’s best interest to have one in place. As mentioned above, I think this needs to be a whole-school initiative.
In relation to this unit however, I don’t think we would have done anything differently. When we sit down together as a team, maybe that will change. Learning to research is difficult for most at this age, especially when tasked with synthesising vast quantities of data to make an explanation.
Visual Literacy
Throughout the unit in English lessons, 6-8 students presented a Quest to the class about a certain topic that they wanted to focus on. Many used the content of their Unit of Inquiry, and that of the genre of explanations, to created pieces of work to share with the class. These Quests were geared towards the Learning Outcomes in English and that of presenting orally. Here are two electronic versions:
Not all were so lovely as those two. Many had confusing images, no references and poor visual elements. What became obvious as the unit progressed was their understanding for presentation design. Pink backgrounds with red text; massive amounts of information on a slide; green text written over light coloured images; you get the drift. These Quests provided us with a platform to discuss presentation methods and styles. I introduced them to Presentation Zen and showed them this Slideshare by Garr Reynolds:
It was really nice to see students demonstrate their learning for visual literacy as the worked on their summative tasks. Some students asked about creating text boxes to put under their words so they were more visible, while others manipulated images to show a clearer message. Gone were the multiple funky fonts and the strange colour combinations, possibly a result of using emaze for the task. Some students even has to change their project after beginning realising that Prezi-style transitions and colourful backgrounds were actually more harmful to their final product. It was great to see this learning taking place.
Ideas for Next Time
When reflecting back on a unit, it’s always easy to say that many things can be changed. From the provocation to the actual summative assessment task, there is always room for improvement. For me, I enjoyed with this group of teachers and these students. They improved over the course of the unit and did the best job they could to redefine their learning through new ways. Creating and managing accounts, workflow and expectations, they did a wonderful job to stay on task and take their research and turn it into a presentation for everyone in the HLY community to eventually see.
However, in hindsight it probably would have been better for myself to choose to work with this Year group in January, February or March. That is my fault. Procrastinate, delay, get busy, forget, put off…call it what you want, but with this time of the year being so hectic (eports, Exhibition, Book Week, school visitors, swimming schedule, etc.) it’s been hard to get consistency some days as timetables get shuffled around. It has made it a real challenge to pull everything together.
Anywho, here are some thoughts on the unit….
As you will see in my video, students created a video and then peer-assessed their friends on paper against the key features of an explanation text. Maybe there was a miscommunication there between the teachers and I, but if I were to do the unit again, I would have definitely set up a Google Form whereby students could have easily checked off boxes and given short answer instant feedback to their peers online. We have the tools, we just need to use them properly when such situations arise. That issue still eats me; really wish we had done that.
I would also like to have all classrooms using social media to make connections with other classes around the world. Whether it’s a personal teacher account or a school-generated one, I would like to see us make more connections to the outside community. If done correctly, it also provides a nice platform where students can take ownership. Right now, as a school, we’re inconsistent in our messages and aren’t connecting like other leading international schools are. I think that is one of my big failures in helping to organise and facilitate that for them. This final task the students created should be shared on the school’s social media channels like Twitter and Google+ to drive traffic and commentary back to their work. I’ll continue to work on that over the next couple of weeks.
A Google Hangout and/or Skype sessions would have been better than just researching and locating information for our explanation. Getting opinions from people who are actually living in other places, affected by the geographical features we’ve been talking about, would have been much better than research alone. That is on my shoulders and one target that will be added into the unit reflection for next year.
Adding Chinese into the mix would be good as well. We pride ourselves on having a strong Chinese language programme so it would be nice to see some of these explanations having components of both languages.
Using the newly purchased 3D printer that just arrived could enable students in the future to push their learning to new heights. By creating a project where they design and print a 3D geographical feature affecting civilisation, it would not only make it more interesting for students, but would redefine the task entirely. With our ‘Maker Movement’ in the works, combining tech like Makey Makey’s, Arduinos and DIY activities, this unit could take on a whole new look next year!