Some Good News

I am pleased to say that our department has been approved to purchase a set of laptops! That's the good news; now for the hard yards.

My biggest problem is what to get!

Tablets?
I really enjoy my own tablet, but use it mostly for reading, browsing, or quick social media responses. The onscreen keyboard is a drawback for me (in a pinch I use a USB one), but the biggest drawback for the secondary English classroom, I think, is that you are limited to doing one thing at one time. This drives me crazy when I'm cooking. I like to follow a recipe and listen to youtube at the same time, so I break out the multi-task Chromebook. Plus, I don't think they'd wear well in an all-boys high school.

Chromebooks?
I'd love to get a set of chromebooks, not the least of which because I could afford two sets of them. At $249/ea you can't go wrong. However, my own students spend computer time creating - using audio/visual tools to create and edit video and sound that they can use and/or embed as presentations and case studies. I'm not sure the Chromebook will allow us that ability - what do you all think? Anyone with some experience here who could chime in with an opinion? Are there online audio/video tools that are of good quality?

Laptops?
I think this is probably where the money will be spent. We can get decent 8-gig Toshiba laptops for a reasonable (for NZ) $600, excluding our multi-purchase/school discount. Laptops have the advantage of multi-tasking with tools on the HDD. The drawback, of course, is the price. When you can buy two Chromebooks for less than one laptop, well...

I'd like to hear what you have to say, so please leave a comment about what you're doing and how it's working for you.

We Have a Winner! (Book Trailers)

As you know, my Year 9 class recently made book trailers for their personal reading. I set up a survey form in Docs so they could vote for the one they considered had done the best work integrating the three required features: text, image(s), and sound. The winner is...

The winner, Laird, will receive a highly coveted Twinkie from my stash.  What do you think of his work?

Promoting Literacy via Technology

This last term, our school librarian, Stephanie Ellis, and I got together to think about boys and literacy. High school boys don't like to read much, if at all. In fact, it isn't unusual to hear a boy bragging about how he "hasn't read a book all year!" Depressing, eh? So Steph and I put our heads together and came up with a multi-faceted unit to help promote literacy throughout the school. Stephanie offered up the "Read for a Feed" programme, where a class can win morning tea by reading, cumulatively, the most books for the school year (Terms 1-3). My Year 9 class had the option of using one personal reader for their second studied text for final exams. Together, we created a reading, viewing, and speaking unit that culminated in a product the whole school could use.

We (the class and I) created "book trailers" (like film previews) for our chosen books. The task was to combine text, image(s) and sound in a coherent moving image that would produce a sense of excitement in the viewer. The trailers were created in .ppt and then saved as a Windows Video File. As the boys cannot access youtube themselves, I then uploaded all of their videos to my personal account so they could create QR Codes for their books. These codes were then printed out in two sizes: one for the book cover, one for the bookcases/display areas.

Lastly, the boys each created and edited a 30-60 second video on their view of the state of technology in secondary schools (will post some of these as they finish). Some of them have come from very highly resources intermediates, so these were quite interesting! This video will be used in a presentation to the BoT next month, when Steph and I present our literacy initiative. 

 Very lastly, I created a survey in Google Drive so the boys could vote for the best trailer (prize: one of my final Twinkies!). I also surveyed them after the unit to see what they enjoyed the most (or didn't), what skills they had learnt (or taught), and what they would recommend to other students (and the BoT). I highly recommend giving it a go. Although the boys weren't too happy to be limited to creative commons (and a couple tried to get around it!), they came up with some integrated concepts. 

 Of course, the project was not without its pitfalls. The boys couldn't directly download sounds from the soundbanks, so they had to find the ones they wanted, email the links to me, and I would download them and put them into Student Data. They also cannot access youtube, so they emailed me again when their videos were completed, and I uploaded them from their network accounts. I then emailed them back the link to make the QR codes, which they printed and gave to Steph, who printed them on colour paper, laminated them, and posted throughout the library. Now all we need is wireless! Total amount of non-teaching time for me to do things they should have been able to do themselves: 6 hours (there's 30 of them; 1 of me).

Technology in 2012

Summary of technology used this year:

As you can tell from my last 2 posts, it hasn't been a banner year. I have tried, within the limitations I have, to utilise as much tech as I can, but the students themselves have so little access, that of the time they spend trying to create a project, I spend twice as much time having to create/upload/download/convert their work that it's a major turn-off. We have had very little access this year, including a 2 week period where one teacher booked our only resource for four weeks straight for word processing, and another closed their lab for an entire term so the THREE students who put together the yearbook could have the whole lab.

Ok, enough whinging.

This year, my year 13 students have utilised Prezi (for the first time for them - so proud!) to present their oral presentations. they did a great job! what wasn't great: my laptop not connecting to the data projector, the network going down during their presentation time (several days in a row, and several times in a period) and the load-time for any embedded audio/visuals.

My year 12 students have created a film study google doc for the tv mini-series they studied. This involved me having to watch several hours out of class to rip stills for them to use to illustrate their points, which was fine by me as long as they were using them. I found using google docs for collaborative work better than a wiki, because they can all create in one place at the same time.

My year 9 students have created a film wiki. They didn't enjoy this as much because 1) they couldn't access the film shorts on youtube while working on their pages, 2) only one person per group could post at one time, and 3) they couldn't upload anything to the wiki themselves; they had to wait for me to do it. What was really cool was that we were able to ask Simon Pegg questions!

My year 10 students worked with Fakebook again this year. This will be the last time I use Fakebook in class. The site requires a number of steps to be done in a certain order before the page can be saved (and edited), and they struggled greatly with this, constantly losing their pages and having to start from scratch. The student who persevered won a coveted twinkie.

Right now, my Year 9s are working on a project that our Librarian and I collaborated on. They are creating book trailers for their chosen texts. Once completed, I have to upload them to google docs myself, then email them the link so they can create a QR Code. The code is then printed for 1) the cover of the library book and 2) a space in the library that the Librarian has prepared. We decided to do this project to increase literacy, always an issue in a boys' school, and to present to the BoT what students can do when they have access.

I've also had the boys prepare a 30-60 second speeches where they state what they expected to be doing in high school (technology-wise) and how those expections have been met. I'm going to edit these speeches into one video.

When the tasks are complete (had hoped this would be done by the end of the term, but it takes me 15 minutes on our network to upload each trailer to youtube, sigh), the Librarian and I are going to request to be on the agenda at a BoT meeting and have a 2-part presentation: 1) this great project, and 2) what's really going on at our school tech-wise and a plan for what can be done about it.

And that pretty much sums up this year.

I'm Tired. I'm Frustrated. I'm Angry.

I can't believe it's been so long since I posted last. Or maybe I can. I'm tired. I'm frustrated. And I'm angry. I'm tired of not having reliable access to the internet at school. I have been keeping a diary for the last year of all the network errors I encounter during the course of the day, and there are so many! This is just when I actually want to use it (of course, typically when a lesson revolved around something required on the internet); who knows how much more often it actually is! I'm frustrated. I've skipped out on ICT committee meetings since this time last year, when I realised that I am the only department person who shows up regularly, and that the meetings accomplish nothing for students/staff. I attended the most recent, briefly, which mostly discussed how we're going to keep the kids from using the new high-speed broadband network. I understand that while much of this is the laziness factor on the part of certain people, a part of it is also financial, and that's frustrating too. I'm angry. Our department had a vacancy last year, and it was advertised as "leading the school in technology integration." Well, thanks for the kind words! However, the person hired was NOT impressed when they arrived (from overseas). They feel a bit hustled. I'm not surprised. I'm angry my students can neither download or upload files for their work, and cannot view youtube at all! Needless to say, this put the breaks on our film wiki project. I ripped my DVD and dumped it into the student data file instead, but what a pain! This is after we were all told off for having too much stuff in our department folders that the server couldn't handle. Well, what do they expect when students have no access? If the kids had access to youtube, they could watch the bit of the film they are analysing without taking up server space. I'm angry the network went down three days in a row during report writing week, for hours at a time (as it does EVERY reporting period). I mean, seriously. If the network can't handle the traffic when it needs to, shouldn't it be UPGRADED? Nothing like last minute pressure to meet report deadlines (NOT EXTENDED [understandably]) during exams, marking, and managing groups of boys who have sat their exams and are ready for the holidays but there's still two weeks to go! If you think I'm angry, spare a thought for those poor staff members who took time away from their own families to work on reports from home using our remote server, which promptly went down and deleted all their work. I'm angry, no, I'm still really, really PEEVED OFF at last year's frustrating episode that some of you will remember. But I feel I have no recourse whatsoever. I'm still so angry about this that I am retraining myself with the ICT curriculum (that's my PD for this year) and considering a change. A major change. This year I've had so little access that the time it takes to set up blogs, wikis, and keeping all of it updated all the time just doesn't seem worth it. And that's sad. What's also sad is how little I feel this year. I no longer go in early, and I leave every day by 4pm. It means I'm super busy when I'm there, but I'm simply not prepared to continue to give and give and give of my home time when nothing changes on the other end. I'm not attending any conferences this year, which makes me sad, but I cannot justify the expense from my household budget when there's no implementation afterwards. Guess what else is sad? I find I'm understanding more and more why other staff simply can't be bothered to get wired. It does take a lot of your time. It does require ongoing upskilling. But...they will not actually be using it in the foreseeable future. Heck, my room doesn't even really have heat, doesn't have any a/c, and definitely doesn't have any computers. I'm tired of fighting for access. I'm frustrated that people still see students using computers as "playing," and I'm angry that I'm not able to prepare my students for their futures. But heck, they can use a pen and paper like nobody's business!

Post Facebook

i have to say, i'm not one bit sorry that i terminated my fb account over a year ago now, but i have a reflection on it.

one of the reasons i used facebook was getting back in touch with old friends. it was pleasing to see what everyone was up to. i was able to enjoy a friend's remarriage, see everyone's kids, etc, etc, all that stuff you do as a facebooker. living 12K miles away from everyone i knew in "real life," fb was like a lifeline home when i felt lonely or struggled with culture differences. i used fb to keep up with my sister, auntie & cousins, and through them, my mother and grandmother, on a daily basis.

before the internet, as a marine brat, i moved a lot (17 different schools between grades 1-12!), and was very familiar with the little fact of life that people do not keep in touch, no matter how hard you try to keep the lines of communication open. so why was i surprised that when i left facebook, i never heard from my "real life" friends again?

so i've had a think about it. and i realised that, with the exception of my very best friend, the people who have "been there" for me over the last 10 years have been those i've met online. when i've needed assistance with something, when i want to relax and have some down-time, when i want to chit-chat about things i like, my friends have been my online friends. when i went through a rough patch a few years ago, the person who spoke with me all the time and helped me through it was someone i've never met in person (but whom i've now "known" for about 13 years - wow time flies! you know who you are ;-)).

the people from fb i have heard from since leaving? the ones i've met online (and who are, clearly, technologically adept). in the meantime, my so called real (before technology) friends have been neither seen nor heard from. no one has used any other service to keep in touch - not email, another social network, or even the bloody phone! even my own sister, who, to be fair, rarely engaged with me on fb anyhow, hasn't been heard from in weeks. it's as if my family and friends' only contact with the outside world is through facebook, as if facebook IS the internet for them. i find that rather horrifying.

there's some people out there who think that people like us should "get off the internet and go interact with real people." those people have no idea what they're talking about. and now that i've thought about this a bit, i'd like to say thanks. here's a hearty thank you to my truly *real* friends - those i have met via random bulletin boards, online groups, twitter, g+...those friends who have been there for fun, when i've needed help, and who just pop by to say "hi" or post a random photo of nice things just because they're nice people. you guys make my day.

QR Codes, Part Two

so, the kids were pretty rapt with the qr code; even my juniors, when they saw it, wanted to scan it and see what it did as well. i was thrilled to have them so interested in something going on in an english classroom. however, it wasn't without its bumps.

firstly, if the kids didn't have an android phone, they didn't have an app store (or, at least, not an icon labelled "app store" or "app market"). however, most of them had downloaded apps in the past, and knew how to get about it, and then we shared bluetoothing the links to each other so everyone could participate. i explained to them how when i chose my app, i used my laptop to see others' reviews of each app before i decided on which one i would d/l for myself, and encouraged them to do the same.

then came the next problem. most kids don't have plans. they spend their $10-$20/month on a text-only top up. that means that while they could d/l the app, they couldn't actually go to the site and use the flashcards on their mobiles, which was the intention ("class in their pockets"). one boy announced that in the course of d/ling the app (at home) he had burned through his whole month's top up - bound to be a telecom phone, that one!

so...if the kids can scan qr codes, but can't actually visit the site it leads to, how helpful is the qr code in engaging them? something more to ponder.

in related news, i found a whole bunch of qr codes on car mags my husband had brought home from the states last month, and our local paper had one last week in an ad, and so did the cinema! they are certainly getting everywhere.

what did you do last week?