Digging into data with blogger & sheets

Today's theme has been dealing with data. Blogger and sheets are great tools to investigate what might be happening with our students. Blogger collects data about the number and frequency of posts, the number and origin of views and comments, even the type of device a post was viewed from and the browser that directed the traffic. If students are using labels effectively, these can also be useful to dig into. 

I have learned how to use sheets through a process of trial and error, googling, frustration and eventual progress. If I have seen someone else do something with sheets that I want to do, I generally find out a way to do it. The cool thing about coming to something link the DFI is that I find out the things that I didn't know that I didn't know about. I made this chart using the 'Explore' tool in Google Sheets. It is amazing to me how much spreadsheet software has improved over time, it really has become way more intuitive. What I like about the 'Explore' tool is that it places the emphasis back on the 'so what' of the data by allowing users to ask questions, picking out correlations in data and automatically generating charts that might be useful. 

I wanted to have a look at the blog data for those students who had been top bloggers in the SLJ 2017-18, to see if their strong summer blogging had been maintained throughout the following year. What I saw was that the students who were the most frequent posters over the SLJ also posted regularly throughout the year. Some of the students who participated in SLJ look to have left their Kootuitui school, or stopped blogging early in the year. Something that I have taken from this exercise is the importance of teachers incorporating blogging as an everyday activity in the classroom.

As I was working on this, there were all sorts of other questions coming into my mind, and possible applications for blog data. How could would it be to have a blogathon? Is there a way that we could get people to sponsor us for the number of posts we make, or the words we write? It could be great for competition between classes, clusters etc.

Tōku pepeha

Creating a digital pepeha was quite a fun activity, but it brought into focus the importance of language and culture in shaping our world view. The way a pepeha is constructed demonstrated the idea that we are all connected to our physical environment, and that wherever we go, our tūpuna are with us. As a first generation New Zealander, this has been difficult for me to connect with, at times, as my experience of growing up in many different places, with only my parents and my siblings as family, has not aligned with this. I think the 'western' perspective is also more individualistic and focused on the present day (even the future) with our attitude to the world around us often being one of ownership, development and wealth creation, rather than one of kaitiakitanga.

Connecting with others is probably one of the most rewarding aspects of a career in education, and engaging in an activity that allows someone to see the world from another perspective is so valuable in forming authentic connections. 

Live streaming to YouTube

Kent came in this morning to share his knowledge and experience with live streaming. Although much of it went over my head, I can see how this would be an incredible tool for community engagement, with community being defined in its broadest sense.

This also built on the thoughts I had during our WWW session this morning, about how Hangouts could be great for connecting with Whānau to share in collaborative goal setting, celebrating successes etc. 

Capturing our thinking by recording a hangout

This afternoon we did some real growth mindset learning, as we practised using quicktime and google hangouts to capture our discussion about a piece of work. In our group of 3, one person was the screen recorder (Janish), one person was the conversation MC (Susan) and one was the technical troubleshooter (moi).

On the surface level, the activity was to discuss a student's blog post from the 2017-18 Summer Learning Journey, to tease out the teaching and learning that were visible. We had a rich conversation about what we thought was the learning intention, how the student's post demonstrated the learning and how the comments had supported and extended the learner. We thought we had captured this rich discussion with this screen recording:

As you will quickly realise, we caught nothing with out first screen recording. We were upset that our conversation had been lost, but keen to figure out what gone wrong. We then went back through the process so that we would be able to do a better job next time. Our second recording captures sound and the blog we were looking at. Unfortunately our first conversation is not rewindable though!

Reflecting on this experience, I can see how the technology will enrich and enhance the learning. My worry is that when the focus was on learning, but we were experimenting with the technology, we were unsuccessful with using the technology. When we were focused on the technology, we were less focused on the learning task. This reinforces to me the need to build experience loops into learning programmes, and the importance of teachers practising the skills that were taught during facilitation so that students are focused on deep learning.

Preserving Sanity with Google Keep

This morning's 'deep dive' was a Google Keep session. I have used Evernote for years, but have only just started using Keep. Some of the highlights for me are:

• accessibility from all devices
• ability to jump between two accounts on mobile (work & home)
• taking pictures then converting to text
• voice memos
• collaboration on notes
• notifications on notes
• integration with Gmail

What would be ideal is notification if collaborators have added to notes, hopefully this will come in the future.

Google docs as a creation tool

Our challenge this afternoon was to create a poster/infographic using docs. 

I failed

Miserably!

Although I could see the thinking behind showing off some of the untapped potential of docs, I got super frustrated with the limitations of not being able to layer content, and started trying to 'cheat' by doing work in google drawings that I could input... which I guess kind of defeats the purpose...

So I gave up. 

It's the end of day 1 of the DFI, I have a lot of ideas to percolate between now and next Friday, and I'm looking forward to reading through everyone else's posts to get the different perspectives.

Google Docs 101

Investing in effective routines at the beginning of the year doesn't end with lining up, naming stationery and ruling red lines down the centre of their 1E5 books. Setting up effective digital routines will reap similar rewards in terms of managing the learning environment.

Some things to remember:

Rather than a simple copy and paste, adding the shift key into the mix will remove any underlying formatting from the source 

 

Using formatting styles will allow easier navigation e.g through table of contents or document outline. Make links powerful by focusing on particular sections of a document when sharing. This can also make student work more manageable. Why have a new doc every day for each learning activity? Using heading styles for Docs can allow new work to be added every day, without having docs all over the show.

 

Voice typing can be used for a number of classroom applications, and can overcome some of the pain points in student work flows.

Workflow with Chrome & Drive

Stand out for me from this session was Shift+Z which allows a user to add to a folder, within drive and from shared with me. This could be a great strategy for teachers who struggle with sharing permissions for their class site, as adding items to the 'class site' folder will adjust the sharing settings. It could be quite a shift for some of us to move our default from private to 'anyone with the link can view'. I see this as a digital version of 'deprivatising our practice.'

Google Groups

Communication is so important for getting things done, and keeping everyone happy and feeling included. Creating a Google group allows everyone to stay in the loop - essentially an automatic reply all. Group members can adjust their settings to avoid 'spam syndrome'. Really good for sharing settings and keeping everything seamless.

I want to set up a group for my lead teachers, and think that it could be helpful to create a forum for teachers in 1:1 classes. First I need to get admin settings changed to allow Google groups for business.

A question I am left with is, how do we make sure that we are communicating effectively and efficiently? Are there rules of thumb about when we have a 1:1 private communication and when we need everyone to know? Where is the balance between inclusion and overload?

Learn, Create, Share

By using digital technologies to share learning, we give our tauira a forum to have their voices heard. This is especially important in communities that may be overlooked due to multiple disadvantages.

In 2005, web 2.0 launched, allowing connection and creation. 

The device is the pencil, not the book. If the device isn't the book then where is it? In the cloud. This allows the learning to be ubiquitous. This learning becomes visible using sites.

Deliberate acts of teaching - this is at the heart of the kaupapa. It's about the learning, not the technology

Manaiakalani Origins