KnowHow 2014a by Advanced Practitioners

South Essex College | KnowHow | 2014a

now how

Hare & Tortoise Tech

Activities in Moodle

Making PowerPoint Dynamic

Technology for Teachers Surface RT in Education

Hare & Tortoise Round-Up Classroom Strategies for the Learning Cycle

Embedding YouTube into Moodle Google Drive: 5 Applications we should be using

now how

Contents

Using Moodle

Activities Overview................................. p4

Embedding YouTube ........................... p6

Hare & Tortoise Round-up................................ p7

Poll Everywhere........................................ p8

Socrative........................................................ p9

Popplet............................................................ p10

Padlet............................................................... p10

YouTube......................................................... p11

In Depth

Interactive with PowerPoint............. p12

Surface RT in the Classroom........... p14

p14

Classroom Strategy

Learning Cycle Strategies................. p16

Te(a)ch

Pick Me............................................................ p17

Quizlet............................................................. p17

Teacher Kit.................................................... p17

SkyDrive ........................................................ p17

MyTime .......................................................... p17

Google Drive ............................................... p18

Staff Development: Tracy Hull – Extension 1695 Basildon 2nd Floor B219 Amanda Davis – Extension 4476 Southend 5th floor Staff Development Office. Rachael Waldram – Extension 4817 Southend 5th floor Staff Development Office. Staffdev@southessex.ac.uk

p18

Advanced Practitioners: Clare Murray Joanne Styles Chris Brookes Andy Crissell Adam Carter Desmond Darcy Stella Harcourt Markus Copping Gareth Riley

Learning Technologists: Russell Dines—Extension 1660 Basildon Learning Resource Centre

AdvancedPractitioners@southessex. ac.uk

LearningTechnologists@southessex. ac.uk

Christopher Woodford – Extension 4472 Southend Learning Resource Centre Lyshi Soloman – Extension 2602 Thurrock learning Resource Centre

Moodle

Activities Overview

oodle is far more than just a repository for all your lesson resources, at its beating heart lies the potential for a true Virtal Learning Environment, a system which can automatically teach, target, progress monitor, grade and provide feedback! Unleash the true power of Moodle on your course’s page by using some of these simple activity plugins available on Moodle!

Assignments

Set-up Time: 5mins

Interactivity: n/a

Students can submit any digital content (files), including, for example, word-processed documents, spreadsheets, images, audio and video clips. Assignments don’t necessarily have to consist of file uploads. Alternatively, teachers can ask students to type directly into a text field in Moodle. Or they can ask student to do both, upload a file or files and type text directly into Moodle. An assignment activity can also be set up to not accept any student submissions and serve as a reminder to students of a ‘real-world’ assignment they need to complete and to record grades in Moodle for activities that don’t have an online component. An assignment has an ‘available from’ date before which no students can submit anything, and a due date, after which teachers can choose not to accept submissions any more. Markers can choose to be notified every time a student submits an assignment, or only for late submissions. Markers can choose to give students feedback in the form of text or uploaded files.

Chat

Set-up Time: 1min

Interactivity:

The chat activity module allows participants to have a real-time synchronous discussion in a Moodle course. This is a useful way to get a different understanding of each other and the topic being discussed – the mode of using a chat room is quite different from the asynchronous forums. The Chat module contains a number of features for managing and reviewing chat discussions.

Choice

Set-up Time: 3min Interactivity: A choice activity is very simple – the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses. It can be useful as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to allow the class to vote on a direction for the course; or to gather research consent. Choice requires some preparation time for creating your activity and thinking about what results you would like to achieve, but your participation with activity itself is likely to be minimal.

Database

Set-up Time: 5min

Interactivity:

The database activity module allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost unlimited, including images, files, URLs, numbers and text amongst other things.

Feedback

Set-up Time: 10min

Interactivity:

The Feedback module allows you to create and conduct surveys to collect feedback. Unlike the Survey tool it allows you to write your own questions, rather than choose from a list of pre-written questions and unlike the Quiz tool, you can create non-graded questions. The Feedback activity is ideal for the likes of course or teacher evaluations.

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Moodle Set-up Time: 2min Interactivity: The forum module is an activity where students and teachers can exchange ideas by posting comments. There are four basic forum types. Forum posts can be graded by the teacher or other students. A forum can contribute significantly to successful communication and community building in an online environment. You can use forums for many innovative purposes in educational settings, but teaching forums and student forums are arguably the two more significant distinctions.

Forum

Set-up Time: 2min Interactivity: The glossary activity module allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary. Glossary can be used in many ways. The entries can be searched or browsed in different formats. A glossary can be a collaborative activity or be restricted to entries made by the teacher. Entries can be put in categories. The auto-linking feature will highlight any word in the course which is located in the glossary.

Glossary

Lesson

Set-up Time: 1hr+

Interactivity:

The lesson module presents a series of HTML pages to the student who is usually asked to make some sort of choice underneath the content area. The choice will send them to a specific page in the Lesson. In a Lesson page’s simplest form, the student can select a continue button at the bottom of the page, which will send them to the next page in the Lesson.

Quiz

Set-up Time: 15mins+ Interactivity:

The Quiz activity module allows the teacher to design and build quizzes consisting of a large variety of Question types, including multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions. These questions are kept in the Question bank and can be re-used in different quizzes.

Survey

Set-up Time: 5mins

Interactivity:

The Survey module is a course activity that provides a number of verified survey instruments, including COLLES (Constructivist On- Line Learning Environment Survey) and ATTLS (Attitudes to Thinking and Learning Survey), which have been found useful in assessing and stimulating learning in online environments. Teachers can use these to gather data from their students that will help them learn about their class and reflect on their own teaching.

Wiki

Set-up Time: 5mins

Interactivity:

Wiki is a collection of collaboratively authored web documents. Basically, a wiki page is a web page everyone in your class can create together, right in the browser, without needing to know HTML. A wiki starts with one front page. Each author can add other pages to the wiki by simply creating a link to a page that doesn’t exist yet.

Workshop

Set-up Time: 15mins Interactivity:

Workshop is a peer assessment activity with many options. Students submit their work via an on line text tool and attachments. There are two grades for a student: their own work and their peer assessments of other students’ work. Workshop is similar to the Assignment module and extends its functionality in many ways. However, it is recommended that both course facilitator (teacher) and course participants (students) have at least some experience with the Assignment module before the Workshop is used in the course. As in the Assignment, course participants submit their work during the Workshop activity. Every course participant submits their own work. The submission may consist of a text and attachments. Therefore, Workshop submission merges both Online text and Upload file types of the Assignment module. Support for team work (in the sense of one submission per group of participants) is out of scope of Workshop module. The submissions are assessed using a structured assessment form defined by the course facilitator (teacher). Workshop supports several types of assessment forms. All of them allows multi-criteria assessment in comparison to the Assignment module where only one grade is given to a submission. Workshop supports peer assessment process. Course participants may be asked to assess selected set of their peers’ submissions. The module coordinates the collection and distribution of these assessments.

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Moodle

Embedding a YouTube Clip

e. Once the resolution has been, select the HTML code in the box under the video clip, right-click and select copy:

f. This is the code that will enable you to embed a video clip into Moodle. Log-in to Moodle and navigate to the Moodle course you wish to embed the video in. Turn on editing on. g. In the appropriate topic / box, click “Add a resource ....” and select “Label” h. In the Label Text window, select the icon “HTML” in the formatting toolbar:

hilst you are able to link to a YouTube clip by using the URL resource, it is also possible to embed a YouTube clip anywhere on the page. It is worth noting that not all videos can be embedded, the individual responsible for the uploading of the clip has the option to block the clip from being embedded in an external site (such as Moodle) a. Go to www.youtube.com and navigate / search for the clip you wish to embed. b. Under the video clip, click the button labelled “Share” c. Click the button labelled “Embed”:

i. In the new window labelled “HTML Source Editor”, right click in the blank box and click “paste”. The YouTube code will now display in the window: j. Click “Update” k. The YouTube clip will now appear in the “Label text” box. Scroll down to the bottom and click “Save and return to course” l. The embedded clip will now display. Turn edit mode off:

d. Next choose the resolution you wish the video to display, this can be altered and customers. Most Moodle sites will suite 560x315:

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Hare & Tortoise Round-Up

Additional guides and resources available from the Teaching & Learning sub-category on Moodle: http://goo.gl/UVRGLg or http://vle.southessex.ac.uk/course/category.php?id=46

Hare & Tortoise Round-up

Poll Everywhere is a simple application that works well for live audiences using mobile devices like phones. People participate by visiting a fast mobile-friendly web page for your event, sending text messages, or using Twitter. Instructions are displayed on-screen. The poll that is embedded within the presentation or web page will update in real time. Advanced uses include texting comments to a presentation, texting questions to a presenter, web voting, and SMS interactivity in print, radio, and TV.

Online Access

Learners can respond online. These five ways give you the flexibility to fit every situation.

Types of Polls

A poll is a single question or prompt you are inviting your audience to interact with. A multiple choice poll lets you define a set of fixed choices that participants can choose from. Results can be displayed in a graph. An example of a multiple choice poll might be, “How many people are on Facebook?” With options like “500+ million”, “100+ million”, and “Less than 100 million”. A free text poll allows participants to send free-form text responses or short answers instead of pre-defined choices. A free text poll might ask, “What questions do you have for the presenter?” and participants can send in any short answer they want. Their answers might be just one word, a short phrase, or an entire sentence. You can display your audience’s answers in real time on a projector for everyone to see, or just on a laptop in front of the presenter. Some polls are not used in live-event settings (for example, radio, print, or long-term exhibition voting), so a live display of results isn’t that relevant.

1. Your PollEv.com/username page is your page on the web where an audience’s smartphones, tablets, and laptops will follow along with whatever poll you have loaded in PowerPoint or the PollEv Presenter app. You can set the poll manually from the website or Mobile Presenter App by clicking the Push button. Reserve your PollEv.com name now, or learn more. 2. The generic PollEv.com page for situations where some will be responding by text message, but others may want to skip texting fees by entering the same text messaging codes/keywords into a mobile-friendly web site. 3. Private links to individual polls present beautiful full-window polls that look great on any device. Here’s an example that invites text message voting, and this one is optimized for web voting without displaying the results. You’ll find these links under the “Share and Publish” sidebar when viewing a poll. Advanced tips

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4. Web widgets let you embed the poll right in your own blog or web site. Some widgets only share the results of your poll, while others include click-able links so they can vote and see the results. 5. Web survey links are a direct link to a group of polls (a survey) that can be answered all on one page, or in succession. Learn more You can even respond via Twitter! If you’ve enabled Twitter as a way to respond to a poll, then tweets that mention @poll are treated the same as text messages sent to 22333.

Cost

Nothing! You can get up to 40 participants for any single poll for free, and you can have an unlimited number of Polls. As a tutor, you have to sign-up (no cost), but the students don’t have to have an account or sign-up for anything.

Hare & Tortoise Round Up

Quiz (Self-Paced) Socrative helps teachers engage & assess the class with educational activities on laptops, smartphones and tablets. We provide a platform for questioning and discussion while displaying real-time visuals. After the activity you’ll receive a detailed report to assist in further personalizing learning.

Teacher Instructions:

1. Go to t.socrative.com via web browser or launch an iOS or Android Teacher app 2. Enter Email Address and Password 3. From the Teacher Main Screen, click on a SINGLE QUESTION ACTIVITY or a QUIZ-BASED ACTIVITY

Student Instructions:

1. Go to m.socrative.com via browser or launch an iOS or Android Student app 2. Enter the ROOM NUMBER supplied by your teacher and click JOIN ROOM 3. Complete the QUESTION(s) based on the teacher chosen activity 4. Click LOG OUT when prompted by the teacher

Question Types

Pose a multiple choice question orally, in your presentation slides or write it on the board. Simply tap “Multiple Choice”, and the students will be given A through E options. Your Teacher Screen will then show the student selections in columns. Now you can discuss whole class results instantly! A great extension is to let students ask the questions. Follow the Same process for the True or False!

Short Answer Questions

Pose a short answer question to your students and then tap “Short Answer” on your Teacher Main Screen. Students can then type in a response to your open-ended question. When a student selects “submit”, their answer will populate your screen. You can then have students vote on the responses by tapping “Vote on responses.” It provides you another round of formative assessment. Each student device will be presented the short answer responses as multiple-choice buttons. Your device will then reflect a tally of the student votes.

In a quiz, you give students a set of pre-planned questions. After a student submits one question, they move onto the next one, and the next until they’re finished. It’s student paced. The first question will automatically be their name. On the lecturer’s device, click “Live Results” to see who has responded and how they scored. Once everyone has completed the quiz, click “End Activity & Send Report.” An Excel spreadsheet, with all of the data from the quiz, is available for download or you can choose to have it emailed to you. Multiple Choice questions will be graded for you and a total score will be provided for each student. The quizzes will also be available in the Manage Quizzes section of your Teacher Main Screen.

Quiz (Teacher-Paced)

A teacher paced quiz lets you control the pace of the questions. Students will all answer the same question at the same time, and your device will aggregate the student responses in real time. You have the option to hide and unhide the live results. If it is a short answer question, your screen will show each line of student entered text. If the question is a multiple choice, you will see a tally of the students’ responses visualized in a chart of columns (below). To move to the next question, you select “Send Next Question To Students”. At the end of this activity you will also receive a detailed data report of student answers.

Space Race

Students compete in small groups (maximum: 10) to answer your pre-loaded multiple-choice quizzes. It’s super fun and the kids will love it for review, quizzes, surveys and more. The team that gets the farthest right in the allotted amount of time wins. When you’ve decided time is up, click the “end activity & send report” button at the bottom of your screen. You’ll be emailed a data report with all the results!

1. From the Teacher Main Screen, click SPACE RACE 2. From the drop‑down list, select the preferred quiz 3. From the second drop‑down list, select the number of teams 4. Turn AUTO‑ASSIGNED TEAM COLOURS on or off 5. Click NEXT 6. Click START SPACE RACE 7. When students have completed the race, click END ACTIVITY 8. Click EMAIL REPORT, DOWNLOAD REPORT, NO REPORT, or CANCEL

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Hare & Tortoise Round-up How can i use it? As a Present Activity: Display information in chronological order and use the links function to highlight key events. What is it? Popplet is an application whereby teachers and students can create visual thinking maps and concept outlines that help to remember new information, make connections between ideas and share thoughts. How does it work? A popple is a big pin-board that you can put popples onto. A popplet is a container that holds text, photos and videos. Popplet is interactive and lets you move around it, zoom in and out, play videos and jump to links.

As an Apply Activity: Set-up a popplet page on a topic which requires indepth discussion and critical thinking. Share the page with students and get the students to contribute views and opinions. The page content must be moderated. The page can be printed and act as a revision resource for students.

How much does it cost? The free plan allows you to create a maximum of five popplets and use all features. The features include presentation mode, the ability to embed popplets into your web-pages and/ or Moodle, and the capacity to share and collaborate on popplets with others.

Teachers and students can share popplets and collaborate in real time using phones, tablets and laptops How can i use it? Like Popplet, this is a powerful tool that can function in many different ways; here are three simple examples:

What is it? Similar to Popplet, however in some respects Padlet is a little more versatile. Padlet acts like a collaborative notice-board which can host multimedia content and link to other “notices”. How does it work? A Padlet wall can either be individual, like an online and live sketchbook or collaborative so learners post their responses, resources and content to their noticeboard. If using Google Chrome (or another HTML5 enabled browser) updates will be displayed live.

Group Research: Introduce a new topic and then ask learners to research into that topic; learners then post anything they find or useful websites and resources on the wall. The wall can then be accessed later for revision or used to apply their research in another activity.

KWL Chart: After creating a wall and making it public, you can begin by asking the students what they “Know” and what they “Want to know” about a new topic, at the end of the session they add in what they have “Learned”

How much does it cost? Nothing at all, this applies to both institutions, teachers and students. There is simply no cost involved for the users as it is funded through venture capital. Padlet was founded in 2008 and originally titled “WallWisher” but changed their name in FebruOnline Portfolio / Interactive Gal- ary 2013. lery: Your learners can post their best work to a single wall or they can create individual walls (which requires learners to sign-up) hosting and sharing their work. This could also be used as a basis for peer assessment & feedback.

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Hare & Tortoise Round Up

By now virtually everyone working within education in the UK will have heard of (and probably used) YouTube. But very few use it for something other than searching for pre-uploaded videos, YouTube’s real power is that you (and your students) can upload your own videos and keep them private from the rest of the world. So after a particularly topic has been learned, your students can then create a video guide, tutorial or even a “News Cast” on that particular topic; you can then upload it and embed the video onto Moodle or share the “unlisted” link, making the video unavailable to anyone else.

Creating an Account:

1. In your web browser [internet explorer] Go to www.youtube.com 2. In the top right hand corner, click ‘Sign in’ 3. In the top right hand corner click ‘Create An Account’ 4. You will be presented with a page requesting your details: • In the 2nd line box, you will be asked to enter a new Gmail account username; this will later be replaced with your staff e-mail address. • Google & YouTube utilise a great deal of security, particularly including your mobile phone; so make sure the number is right. • In the box asking for your Current E-mail Address, enter your staff e-mail address 5. Assuming all details have been accepted by Google/Youtube, you will be presented with a welcome screen. Click ‘Next Step’ [You will also receive an e-mail

6. In the top right hand corner, next to a blue silhouette click the triangle facing down. In the drop down box click ‘Account’ 7. Next to the text that says ‘E-mail’, click ‘Edit’ 8. Go to your staff e-mails and you should have received an e-mail titled ‘Google Email Verification’, inside will be a long link, click the link to verify your e-mail address. 9. You will be asked to re-enter your password as verification, then click Verify 10. Click ‘Sign-In’ and re-enter your password (again) 11. In account settings you should see that your staff e-mail address has been added as an ‘Alternative E-mail Address’, as a result you can use this address (your staff e-mail address) to sign-in to YouTube & Google without having to remember a new username. The password will remain as set during the set-up procedure. 12. To check this works, click the triangle (as in step 6) and click ‘SignOut’. 13. Go to www.youtube.com, click ‘Sign-In’ and enter your staff e-mail address and the password (set in step 4).

Configure your Account These steps go through the process of ensuring that none of your videos will go public to the world wide

web and remain relatively private between you and your students. 1. Go to www.youtube.com and signin 2. Click on the triangle next to the silhouette in the top right hand corner, and click ‘YouTube Settings’ 3. Under Advertisement, select: ‘Do not allow advertisements to be displayed beside my videos’ 4. Click ‘Save’ to the right hand-side of ‘Overview’ 5. Next your e-mail address, click ‘Create a channel’ 6. A box will open with your details, click ‘OK’ 7. Your channel has not been created. In the upper centre part of the next to ‘Upload’ 8. In the left hand side click ‘Channel Settings’ 9. On the left hand side, now under Channel Settings, click ‘Defaults’ 10. Next to Privacy, in the box select ‘Unlisted’ 11. Next to category, choose ‘Education’ 12. Click save in the top right next to ‘Upload Defaults’ These steps will mean that the videos you uploaded cannot be searched for or found on YouTube, instead the exact link must be distributed or the video embedded on web page such as Moodle. After a video has been uploaded you are able to Edit the video and select “Blur Faces”.

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in depth

Interacting With PowerPoint

eter Norvig, Google’s director of research, once said that “PowerPoint is like having a loaded AK-47 on the table: You can do very bad things with it.” Most working within education will be familiar with common pitfalls PowerPoint and even more will have experienced the boredom which accompanies slide after slide full of text and presenter simply reading off the screen. Microsoft’s software is also under competition from software like Presenter and the online software Prezi. But the old faithful still has a few tricks up its sleaze which are rarely exploited.

Live Text Input

A legacy tool within PowerPoint allows you type directly into your presentation whilst on display; so rather than having everything pre-planned and prepared you can display feedback, comments, contributions from learners and responses from discussions without stopping your presentation. Before we begin will need to have access to the developer tab which hosts the legacy tools: 1) Open PowerPoint and click “File” in the top left corner 2) Select Options from the menu 3) In the PowerPoint Options box select “Custom Ribbon” 4) From the list on the right hand side, tick the box next to “Developer” 5) At the bottom of the box click “Ok” 6) The developer tab will now display at the top PowerPoint window

Now that the developer tab is available, we can access the Text Box feature which is available in with the Controls portion of the ribbon. To create a text box within a PowerPoint slide:

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1) Click the Text Box icon, which is directly to the right of the capital A 2) Within the slide, click and drag where you would like to add your text box 3) You can adjust the size by clicking and dragging the circles on the corners and sides of the text box 4) The text box can be moved by clicking and dragging the box anywhere on the slide. 5) To save time, the text box can be copied and pasted

If you need help getting the most out of PowerPoint and using it for more than simply displaying pictures or text, contact a Learner Technologist by e-mailing learningtechnologists@southessex.ac.uk You can copy and paste timers and text boxes from Moodle by following this link or clicking on the QR code below (log-in required): http://vle.southessex.ac.uk/mod/folder/view.php?id=46420

in depth

Just In Time

One easy mechanism for increasing the pace of your lessons and learning through activities is to use strict and challenging time limits where appropriate. Using PowerPoint you can create your own custom animation set to a specific length of time. You can of course copy and paste a timer from another PowerPoint from Moodle or around the web, but if you want to make your own follow the principles of the steps below: 1) In a blank slide click the insert tab 2) Click “Shapes” and then select the Rectangle 3) Click and drag on your Slide to create a bar 4) Copy and paste the bar so it appears twice 5) Select the new bar and click “Format” on the top ribbon and in shape styles choose an alternative colour, for this example we will be using the colours blue and red. 6) Move the original blue bar to an appropriate location for the timer 7) Move the new red bar directly on top of the blue bar covering it entirely so that the blue bar cannot be seen 8) From the top ribbon click Insert and select text box

9) Draw a text box in the middle of the red box, and type in “Time-Up”, select the text and set it to Bold and Centre 10) From the top ribbon, select “Animations” and click “Animation Pane” 11) Select the red bar click “Add Animation” and select “Wipe” 12) From the main ribbon, click “Effect Options” and select “From Left”

12) From the main ribbon, click “Effect Options” and select “From Left” 13) Click the text and click “Add Animation” and select “Zoom” 14) Above the timings section of the tab, click the drop down box next to “On Click” and select “After Previous” 15) Finally set the time, expand the animation pane by clicking and dragging the left hand edge 16) In the animation pane click the box labelled “Seconds” and select “Zoom Out”, repeat this until you can see the time you want along the bar directly adjacent. 17) In the animation pane, click the small yellow box next to the triangle label and drag into the right to extend the time taken. 18) When the time you want the animation is displayed your animation is complete. These principles can be used to create short little animations which allow learners to monitor their performance and progress within a specific time frame and encourage greater progress.

Quick Tips

• Use a consistent theme throughout, you can select a theme by clicking “Design” in the top ribbon or you can download others from Microsoft. • Use consistent transitions between frames, after you have completed the content of your presentation, select all of the slides, click Transitions from the top ribbon and choose one that is right you. • Less is more: Use images where you can and remove all but essential and summarised text. • Beneath each slide is a section labelled “Notes”, if there is a lot of content to deliver or you want to have your PowerPoint downloadable add the notes here. • You can record your whole presentation including audio if your computer has a microphone by clicking Slide Show from the top ribbon and selecting Record Slide Show. The audio is then embedded into the file which can be uploaded. • If possible, use two screens. If you have a laptop you can “extend” the display onto the projector meaning you can see the notes and upcoming slides, but the projector simply display the slide show.

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in depth

Surface RT In the Classroom

have always been interested in technology and would like to think that I don’t use technology just for its own sake but look for ways in which it benefits me or those around so was really interested in how useful the Surface RT could be in the classroom and other activities. I already owned a range of devices such as an iPhone, iPad, and laptop and I don’t have an allegiance to any one manufacturer or device as I feel each device I have ever used has its own niche but really wanted a device to replace my aging iPad (preferable comparable in ability but cheaper if possible) but one that also had better productivity capabilities. I know that there has been some bad press regarding the sale of the Surface RT’s – that it never lived up to the hype or was not a laptop and you cannot install general programs as you can on a traditional laptop or desktop (its was never meant to be, you cannot install Apple Mac software on an iPad but nobody seems to mention that). If you look at the sales of the first iPad they were not much different. So after the debunking what are the real problems that face the Surface RT? The Windows App Store does not have a wide range of Apps. True, the App store for the iPad has 775,000, Google Play 800,000, Blackberry 70,000, the Windows Store has 150,000 - not too bad for just over a year from release of the store. It is playing catch-up to the more established app stores, but the store also serves Windows Phones and the full blown Windows operating system for the more traditional PC environment. So the benefits, particularly over a traditional tablet or laptop: • Familiar (Windows) environment for most • Portable, I don’t actually dread carting my laptop all over the county. I have even taken the Surface RT to various meeting across the UK. • Fast startup time • Office 2013 RT, productivity tools including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote – a great pieces of software for taking notes in class an in meetings. • USB (device) connectivity - mice, key-

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boards, USB sticks, external drives, digital cameras, accessing photos, videos and charging my iPhone. • Expand the memory (micro SDXC card & USB), effectively turning a 32GB Surface RT into a 96GB Surface RT! • Multiple accounts (useful to have a less personal account when showing on a display to students or letting family members jump on!), • Multitasking, you can carry out two activities side-byside (one in the eye for iPads) • 10 hours of battery life with a fast charge time of less than 3 hours • Skydrive, Microsoft’s own cloud service that allows you to save documents and files to the internet and retrieve on and other connected device such as a desktop. The Suface RT’s are extremely compatible with the colleges systems thanks to the work of the IT Services from connectivity through to MIS (Managements Information Systems). 1. Eduroam: A global system for connecting to the internet and accessing systems (no need to constantly ask for passwords in other organisations). Look for Eduroam in the network setting and use your normal 8 letter log-on username with the college’s domain name and you nor-

in depth mal password to log-on to the college systems. Username: username@southessex.ac.uk (Note: this is not your email address) Password: *********** 2. Moodle: accessed by using the browser on the surface RT browser (Internet Explorer) and visiting http://vle.southessex. ac.uk 3. Staff Portal: Allows access to a whole range of college systems including OIC, ProMonitor and system drives by visiting http://remote.southessex.ac.uk/ WebConnect/AppPortal Username: normal 8 letter logon username P a s s w o r d : ********** In regards to actual classroom practice itself I am still discovering the benefits of the Surface RT from either mimicking the display by wirelessly connecting to the interactive whiteboard PC’s to show resources such as mind maps using “Novamind” (and being allowed to move freely around the room) to using various apps to produce material for lessons such as “Record Voice and Pen” that allows handwritten notes and audio to be captured or using

“skitch touch” to annotate images or screenshots quickly, generate and read QR codes with “QR Creator” and “Scan”. Last week I started to record presentations on the Surfaces own camera, no more worrying about setting up unfamiliar, and sometimes bulky, equipment. When there is not an app that I want to help me, there is always a website that I can access with Internet Explorer and this is a far better experience than any web service I have accessed with an iPad. For anything technical such as using the Surface RT then the Learning Technologists are a great starting point and the Advanced Practitioners can support with advice and suggestions in the classroom. A. Crissell

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classroom strategy

Connect 60 Seconds

Prep-Time: 0 minutes Methodology: This re-cap activity would be most suitable at the beginning or end of a lesson: 1. Ask a (randomly chosen) learner to pick one of the topics from last session 2. Ask that learner to pick someone to start 3. The learner(s) must speak about the topic for a total of 60 seconds without: Hesitation Deviation Inaccuracy Repetition 4. While the learner is re-capping the topic, all of the other learners have the opportunity to “challenge” based on the criteria. 5. If a correct challenge is made, the learner who challenged then carries on the topic with the same rules as before. 6. The purpose of the game is to see who can carry on talking the longest without being challenged.

Thunk

Prep-Time: 3 minutes Methodology: This technique, which targets higher order thinking, would probably not be applicable or suitable to every single topic. However, where it is possible to incorporate this type of a discussion, it is likely to encourage higher order thinking. A Thunk is a statement or questions which has so many different aspects it makes your brain hurt! Crucially a “thunk” must have no right or wrong answer. State one at the beginning of a session and ask learners to challenge each others answers. Example Thunks: When you comb your hair, is it art? Are you man-made or natural? Could JLS do a JLS tribute band? Can a square be ugly?

Share Objective by Question

Prep-Time: 2 minutes Methodology: The purpose of setting out objectives is to provide learners with a sense of achievement upon completion, however it is all too easy to step into the WWADT (what we are doing today) framework. Instead of stating your objectives as a series of objectives, why not set them as questions instead; e.g. “During this session I’m going to be asking you a couple of questions; I’d like everyone to be able to answer this one. However, I’m hoping that one or two of you might also be able to answer this one…” Alternatively, set the objective as a question which does not directly reiterate the objective, but instead will set learners on the right path. For example, if you were to do a session about the links between air pressure and heat, you could ask your class “If at the top of the mountain you are closer to the sun, why is it colder?”

Learner Set Criteria

Prep-Time: 0 minutes Methodology: After introducing the “topic” of the session, ask learners to create a series of “success criteria” for that particular outcome. So for example if the learners were going to develop their presentational skills and were to demonstrate this using a PowerPoint, you could begin by setting a Connect activity where learners define ‘what makes a good PowerPoint presentation’, these can be listed on flip chart paper and used as a comparison and assessment criteria after the learners have applied their new learning. Learners may also peer assess each others presentations based on the criteria they created which will improve learner ownership of the subject.

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Present Job Application

Prep-Time: 0 minutes Methodology: When your students have to explore the different roles within a set industry. Try the following activity: 1. Set learners into teams and assign them a job role 2. Ask each team to create a job advert for that particular role. 3. On completion of the advert, swap the materials the learners have generated and ask the learners to individually create a CV for that role (but change the name if you wish to do the final stage). 4. The learners will then submit their CV’s to the group who created the job advert. 5. Each team will then select a CV they believe is most suitable providing feedback as to why it is the most appropriate. But also state two best aspects or elements of each CV.

Micro Teach

Prep-Time: 0 minutes Methodology: In order for this strategy to be successful, it should be used on a topic which can be subdivided into small bite sized pieces: • Divide your class into pairs or groups of three • Assign a micro-topic or subdivision of the topic to each pair and group. • Ask each pair of group to create a micro-teach (not a presentation) on the particular subject. Encourage learners to use activities and that the objective is not to tell the remaining group the rest of the information but for the rest of the group to learn it. • Once prepared each group will deliver their short micro-teach on the sub-topic. All learners will be encouraged to ask questions and provide feedback.

classroom strategy

Apply Video Guides

Prep-Time: 0 minutes Methodology: Once a topic has been introduced, ask learners in small groups to create a video guide for this process. Learners should: • Plan the content • Decide what should and should not be included • How the information will be presented • How the components of the process will be demonstrated • Once planned, create a short video to demonstrate the process. The learner created videos can then be shared and used as a revision resource at a later date. See page 11 for details on how the video can be shared with the group. Of course this doesn’t have to be filmed, it can be simply presented or compiled into a “step-by-step guide” in order to develop literacy skills.

Scenario

Prep-Time: 0 minutes Methodology: Once a topic has been covered, learners can use the subject content and apply this information to specific “real-life” scenario that would mimic the kinds of tasks they would encounter within employment. This can be taken one step further, by having learners divide into groups and create their own scenarios or problems which can then be posed to the other groups. The design of the scenario would be the Apply phase of the learning cycle, but the assessment they design for their peers can be used within the Recall & Review phase.

Recall & Review What I Learned

Prep-Time: 0 minutes Methodology: This activity is quick way to encourage learners to reflect on their learning and allows for feedback on their learning experience. • Provide each learner with two sticky notes • On the first write down 2 things learned / understood • On the other note, write down one thing not fully understood. • Ask learners to display the notes (on a board for example) • Pair or group learners so that a learner who understands the topic is paired or grouped with someone who does not understand. • The learner who understands the topic now has 5 minutes to try and teach the topic to the other learner(s) Switch around and repeat.

All Response Questioning

Prep-Time: 0 minutes Methodology: All response questioning allows you to assess all learners simultaneously in response to short or low-level questioning; which can be developed by asking learners to justify their answer. Examples: • True or False Thumbs: Make a statement and learners demonstrate whether they believe the statement to be true or false by holding their thumbs up or down. • All response sheets: Either on blank A4 or laminated A4 with board markers (which can then be recycled) ask a question with a simple answer, ask all learners to write their answer in big letters and hold it up for display. • 124: Display 4 different answers or have questions related to 4 different resources, ask multiple choice questions and ask learners to demonstrate which is the correct answer by holding up the appropriate number of fingers.

Higher Order Thinking Skills Peer Assessment Whilst not always appropriate, peer assessment is an effective way of encouraging meta-cognitive thinking by externalising the process. Once criteria for success or grading has been negotiated with the learners and they have generated a piece of work or product from a task; pair learners and ask them to swap work. The work should now be graded with feedback and justification for the grade. It is often appropriate to provide a template or writing frame for the feedback if learners are less accustom to this particular type of task, this could be a complex writing frame or something as simple as 2 Stars & A Wish (2 things their peer did well & 1 thing to make it better).

Socratic Questioning The overall purpose of Socratic questioning, is to challenge accuracy and completeness of thinking in a way that acts to move people towards their ultimate goal: Conceptual clarification: Can you give me an example? What exactly does this mean? How does this relate to what we have been talking about? Probing assumptions: What else could we assume? What would happen if ... ? How can you verify or disprove that assumption? Probing Reasoning: Why is that happening? How might it be refuted? How could this be proven? Questioning perspectives: What alternative ways of looking at this are there? Why is it better than ...? What are the strengths and weaknesses of...? Probe implications: Then what would happen? What are the consequences of that assumption? How does ... affect ... ? Questions the question: What was the point of asking that question? Why do you think I asked that?

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TE(A)CH

App Round-up

TeacherKit ITWorx

Pick Me!

Quizlet

ClassEapps

Quizlet

Format: iOS & Windows

Format: iOS

Format: web & Android

£Free / £2.39

£0.79

£Free

Initially there is some set-up involved with this app as all of your students need to be added to its database, but once they’re all loaded in this app become a fantastic tool for directed questioning. Not only does the app randomly pick students with the option to keep or remove them from the pool, it offers the facility to record and track the number of correct and wrong answers given, making it a quick an easy formative performance tracker.

Quizlet is a popular free service for creating and sharing sets of flashcards. Quizlet flashcards can include audio elements in eighteen languages. The Quizlet Android app makes all of your flashcards available to you on the go. Through the app you can access your own sets of flashcards or search for those made and shared by others. Flashcards can be used even when you don’t have an internet connection.

The TeacherKit app is one of the most advanced learning organisers available. Predominantly, this app is designed for attendance, grading and behaviour tracking. Unfortunately, the grading system isn’t particularly pliable and as a result will not suite all types of curriculum, however if it does suite then this app is truly powerful. In addition to logging attendance & punctuality, the app is able to automatically (and randomly) allocate groups for activities. One of the most powerful features of this app is its ability to compile reports on performance for an individual student, but sadly this is a paid-feature.

SkyDrive Microsoft Format: web & Windows £Free

MyTime MyTime Gernerillo

On the surface (no pun intended) SkyDrive doesn’t seem a particularly useful app for those working in education. As a cloud storage medium, it doesn’t offer as much free storage as other competitive, but it has Office 365 built into it. This means that you can create documents, spreadsheets or presentations on the web and your documents port around with you. What makes SkyDrive for educators fantastic is the fact that your documents port and sync wherever you are, if you change one of your files either on your PC, Surface or on the Web, it will automatically sync that file and file updates to all other devices. You can access all of your files from anywhere and they are always up to date. Any of your documents can also be linked to or embedded within a web format or Moodle, and can be shared with your students if they wanted to create a collaborative document.

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Windows £Free

This handy little app is as simple and effective as it gets; MyTime is designed to be used and displayed on the surface, it is easy to use and it sets a clear time restriction on any activity you set in class. Once you have set an activity, it can sometimes be difficult to clearly motivate learners to work as quickly and effectively as possible, this app will display a simple countdown so that all learners can see exactly how much time they have left to complete the activity. It also has a timer, so if you want your learners to compete to see how quickly they can achieve the end of the task it can be done.

TE(a)CH

Google Drive

oogle Drive—formerly named Google Docs—is Google’s online productivity suite. It’s long been a popular choice for collaborative writing and editing of documents, especially among teachers and students, so I won’t dwell on the excellent collaboration features others have written about at length for years. Google launches new features and add-ins all the time, so if you’re still interacting with Google Drive exactly the same way you did in 2010 in the early Google Docs days, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. Here are five powerful new ways to make the most of Google Drive. Scan classroom documents: The Google Drive team recently launched a document scanner feature for its Android app, and presumably, iOS will follow shortly. Just snap a picture of any document— whether one page or many pages—and it will be uploaded as a black and white PDF to your Google Drive. Once it’s uploaded, Google runs the document through an Optical Character Recognition process so that you can find the document later by searching for key words. Collecting physical homework digitally lets you provide incremental feedback while simultaneously letting students continue to work on the original document. Retrieve old versions of document: It has long been the case that Google Drive has let you view the revision history and retrieve old versions of documents written using the Google Docs productivity suite. More recently, Google Drive launched a computer application which lets you back up your local files to the cloud and view them online in a manner very similar to Dropbox’s service. What you might not know is that every time Drive detects that you’ve changed a file locally on your computer, it not only uploads the new version, but it keeps the old version, too! You can access the version history on the “Manage

revisions” page for any file. If you accidentally modify last year’s test directly and lose the old version, Google Drive has your back. Just check the revisions page to get your old work back! Send large file attachments to students or parents: Email has traditionally limited attachment sizes to between 5 and 25 MB, which is much too small to share videos and other multimedia files. Gmail’s new Google Drive integration lets you attach files as large as 10 GB to your emails. Work with new kinds of documents using third-party apps in Drive: Google Drive is a productivity suite which includes many built-in apps. However, Google lets you install third-party apps to your Google Drive, too. These often-free apps include things like diagramming tools, photo and video editors, PDF annotators, graphing calculators and other math visualizers, note-taking programs, mail merge tools, music players, and many dozens more. Once you install one of these apps to your Google Drive, you can open your Google Drive files with the app straight from the Drive web interface. We all have different needs and work-flows as teachers, but there’s something useful for everyone in the third-party app market. For example, if you scan student work to Google Drive (see tip #1 above), you can use a third-party PDF annotator within Google Drive to mark up those papers directly online. Archive anything on the web: A new Chrome extension called Save to Drive lets you right-click on any web-page or image and save it to your personal document archive. Because Google Drive is in the cloud, you can access your clipped pages and images from any computer or device. Teachers can use this tool when developing materials, especially if you’re working on the same material on multiple computers. Students could also use this extension to help them work on research both in school and at home because the same files and the same information will be visible from any computer. Bill Price http://billcprice.com/futureimperfect/2013/06/the-five-most-powerful-ways-teachers-arent-using-google-drive-yet/