Every Interaction Matters

interaction
noun
reciprocal action, effect, or influence.

As I headed out for my regular run along the “not so picturesque” West Gate Freeway path in my hometown of Melbourne, I had an interaction. This interaction sparked this blog post.

It’s mid afternoon as I approach a rather disheveled looking man meandering slowly with a slouch and grasping a liquor bottle in his right hand. He and I were on that path for different reasons. As I approached him from behind and ran past him I looked over my shoulder and smiled whilst giving him a fleeting thumbs up. I was on a mission (to run!) so I kept going not thinking much of this interaction. A kilometre or so along the track I turn at my usual place and continued back home along the same path. To be expected, I then see the same man in the distance still trudging along the path, now walking towards me. As I approach him this second time, I felt I had already said my “hello”, so was prepared to continue past looking into the distance. But he beat me to it. He looked up, recognised me from our interaction minutes earlier, and gave me a huge grin and a double thumbs up. I was flat out keeping to my religious 4:30/km pace and therefore continued on without missing a beat.




As I tend to do, I use my running time as thinking time, and this interaction got me thinking. I’m constantly saying “hi” or giving a nod as I pass people on running tracks and am fascinated by the varied responses, or lack thereof! I’ve often thought it would make a great measure of a town or suburb or city’s “friendliness”. Some scientific formula of response rates of greetings and/or nods as a %. For example in country towns, I am supremely confident that response rates would be statistically significantly larger than in cities. Anyhow...I digress.

This cheerful response from my anonymous man on the running trail brought a short phrase to mind….”Every interaction matters”. I wasn’t sure if I had heard it before or whether it just made sense to explain my rather fleeting but meaningful interaction I had just encountered. Upon Googling the phrase I’m definitely not the first to coin it...but most search results pointed to business articles and sales strategies. As an educator, my thoughts then immediately jumped to how “Every interaction matters” is a wonderfully fitting mantra for teachers.

On any given school day we have any number of interactions with students, from before school duty in the yard, to greeting your students at the classroom door, to answering that same question for the fifth time in two minutes, to disciplining that students who continually makes “poor choices”.

We may have hundreds of interactions in a day that you lose track of, but to any individual student they are only going to remember that one you had with them.

Therefore:
-give a thumbs up

-keep your eyes up as you walk the school & smile

-call out across the yard to say good morning to that student walking into school with their head down

-ask your student (the one who continually makes “poor choices”) how he went at footy on the weekend

-send a quick email to a student congratulating them on some minor (or major) achievement

-ask to see the baby photos of the newborn sibling of your student

-give a “low five” (you know the one...like a high five but the low key, down by your side type) to that quiet student who has just nailed a tricky maths problem

-if a student has a nickname, ask how they got it and suss out if its ok to use it...I still pass one particular ex-student down the street and will always call out “Hey Buggsy”- he beams and always says hi back.

Every Interaction Matters!

Android Apps on Chromebooks (& Acer R13 review)

Touch on a Chromebook? Android Apps on a Chromebook?

As a Christmas present I decided to buy (ie. give myself!) the latest Acer Chromebook offering, the touchscreen, convertible 13", 4GB RAM, 1080p. As it is yet to be released in Australia, eBay was my friend, along with a US to AUS power adapter.

With my education hat on, I thought I'd review the 2 main features that are of interest to schools....touchscreen & Android Apps (Google Play Store).

Look a bit familiar? MacBook Air anyone?

Volume control (handy to have on the side when being used as a tablet)

Ports: USB C port (next gen power and data transfer), HDMI, USB 3.0 & MicroSD)

Speakers on either side at the front.

Laptop mode

"Watching movie" mode

Tent mode!

"Look...I'm a tablet" mode

Play Store & Android Apps 

The Play Store on Chromebooks is in beta and therefore the Chrome OS had to be changed from "stable" to "beta" in order for it to be available. It then appeared as a pinned app on the shelf for easy access. When adding apps from the Play store they appear among your existing collection of Chrome apps, with no distinguishing label to know which are Chrome and which are Android. E.g. I added the Socrative Android App and the icon appears identical to the Socrative Chrome app- not ideal. I had a play with a number of apps and found that most open in a small window only a fraction of the size of the screen (see below):

Brain Dots- a puzzle game (Play Store App) crashed when I tried to maximise the window.

Scratch Jr  (Play Store App) could be maximised but has no functional benefit over the Chrome App.

Magisto (Play Store App) could not be maximised in landscape mode but if you flipped to tablet mode and held it in portrait, it could be resized to fit the screen. But again, there is a web version of Magisto that has better functionality anyhow.

It is clearly in beta mode and these Android apps have not been designed for Chromebook resolution and even warn "This app may not work when resized". Many Android apps I would be tempted to use in upper primary/early secondary have web based (or Chrome App) equivalents that are superior to use with a screen & keyboard. Examples of Android apps that are best left to the Chrome versions include G Suite (Classroom, Drive, Docs etc.), WeVideo, Scratch, Khan Academy, Socrative. 

So when might Android/Play Store Apps be desirable?

If we turn our attention to junior school apps that are designed for touch & low level literacy (e.g. simple counting, handwriting, letter and sound recognition) then Android apps on a touch Chromebook become a rather appealing offering. Particularly when you are then comparing directly with an iPad, the dual functionality is a real game changer. The fact that a touch screen/convertible Chromebook could act as tablet when required and yet be readily flipped to become a fully functioning laptop as students learning needs progress gives it excellent credibility as an education device. 

Handwriting app opens in small window but can be resized when device is in tablet mode and portrait (see below for how it looks when it's full screen)

A human body app (above) would have no web/Chrome equivalent and therefore only accessible through Play Store and touch devices.

Another consideration is the greater push for coding and robotics often requires the use of a specialised iOS or Android app (e.g. Spheros). These robotic devices would be a perfect example as to why a touchscreen Chromebook with Android compatibility would be a very suitable device for primary schools. As currently our Grade 5/6 students have non-touch Chromebooks and therefore need to access tablets/iPads in order to work with app specific robotics.

To touch or not?

As I've discussed, much of the everyday work done by students in middle/upper primary & secondary (G Suite, web browsing, multimedia creation) is better suited to web-based (Chrome) apps and therefore I don't feel that touch would be used widely, if at all. On the other hand, if you are planning for the future of Chromebooks and the compatibility with the Play Store, then touch is crucial. Android apps are obviously designed for phones and tablets and therefore to operate with a mouse/touchpad would generally be futile. In junior years, when keyboarding is a foreign concept, the ability to integrate touch apps as they learn to type, would be of great benefit...how many times have you seen a little Prep student reach out and touch a laptop screen only to realise it's not like their iPad at home! So in short, if you intend to use the Android Apps, then touch is a must. If you intend to just use Chrome, then touch can be left off your wish list. 

Where's the camera?

Yes, there is obviously a built in web cam on this device (selfies anyone??) but if we are considering replacing iPads then how can a student walk out to the school garden to photograph a ladybug for her minibeasts investigation if the camera is only facing back at the user. So when this device flips to tablet mode there is not a camera facing away from the user! Sort this out please Acer and other manufacturers competing for the school $$$. I like Lenovo's current Chromebook N22 model as, although it's not touch, it has a reversible camera to allow students to take photos facing away from themselves. 

Where to from here?

With the addition of the Google Play Store, undoubtedly more manufacturers are going to enter the touch & convertible Chromebook market. So far only Lenovo have dabbled in the market with their Thinkpad Yoga Chromebook (not really available anymore from my quick search) and this Acer model R13 (only available in the US). I'm looking forward to student-centric designed Chromebooks (rugged casing, waterproof keyboards) with touch and convertibility being prevalent and bringing pricing to a point where schools can jump on board.

What Android apps (that aren't available on the web/Chrome) are you excited about having access to with the new Play Store Chromebook compatibility?

Love to hear your thoughts, opinions, experiences regarding all things aforementioned....leave comments below :)

For the record, here are some links to the Acer Chromebook R13 I reviewed:
Laptop Mag Review
Ebay seller

New Google Sites...first impressions

Google Sites has been a neglected element of the Google suite of tools, long overdue for makeover. Other free website design platforms such as Weebly & Wix have been preferred if you wanted your site to look remotely attractive!

With the latest release of the new Google Sites (BETA), I took 30 minutes to remake my school's student homepage. Have a look for yourself and compare the interface...

ORIGINAL VERSION

Created using "OLD" Google Sites

NEW VERSION

Created using "NEW" Google Sites

Apart from the aesthetics...a few other observations from my brief dabble.

TICKS

• sites are now easily accessible from my Drive rather than having to go to sites.google.com
• can double click anywhere for quick insert (see image below)

• header banner is more customisable...can add text boxes, images etc.
• preview mode allows you to see tablet and phone views
• much easier interface for editing, will be very student friendly even down to junior years

CROSSES

• templates are very limited (yes...it is still in BETA)
• where are all the font styles??

• elements can be dropped and dragged, but this is still a bit clunky if you want to get something in a particular spot
• no ability to add external links to horizontal menu- it is just auto-populated with any pages from your site. In my example above, the workaround was to insert a series of little text boxes directly below the header and hyperlink each one
• appears to be no "page-level permissions" feature as yet- something that can be very handy if you want to allow students to manage certain elements of a site, but not everything!

Above all else, it is a breath of fresh air in a tired old product...looking forward to new features rolling out in the near future!

Cyber Safety

As our school's ICT leader, cyber safety is always a major consideration and priority. Our school has began 1:1 Chromebooks for Grade 5/6 students this year and has subsequently reinforced the need to "bolster" our approach to cyber safety......bring in Susan McLean!

Having attended the ACMA free cyber safety evenings at 2 previous schools, we were keen to explore another option. After much research online and speaking to other school directly, we decided on paying for Susan McLean to run a student incursion and a parent information evening early in Term 1. Having seen the poor attendance at previous parent evenings for this very topic, we decided to make it a compulsory element of the students receiving their Chromebooks...funnily enough when the students knew their parent's attendance = Chromebook in their hands that same week- we had a 100% parent attendance! (hint: we also offered free babysitting and screening of Frozen so parents had no excuse)

Susan's proudly states that she doesn't "sugar coat" the message, she tells it how it is. With her experience in the Police force and broadly in cyber safety education, she has anecdotes to share to reinforce all of her messages. In short, the kids were blown away and parents were too! Our principal and I have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from parents both on the night and in the week since..."it was confronting but what we needed", "I guess I just didn't know those apps existed", "it's fantastic that all the parents now have the same message and can act together", "we will be making a few changes at home immediately".

We surveyed the students (click here to see the survey) a week after the incursion to get some feedback...the results were very encouraging!

Anyone interested in more information, I'm happy to discuss our experiences: 
Marty- mmcgauran@hfmw.catholic.edu.au

Can highly recommend Susan McLean: http://www.cybersafetysolutions.com.au/

My First Mystery Hangout

As a member of Google+ communities, I had read about Mystery Hangouts (Skypes) in the classroom- so this term I was determined to give it a go!

After responding to a post in Google Hangouts in Education (Google+ Community) I had co-ordinated a time with a school in Alberta, Canada. One normal constraint of Hangouts is that you must be in a similar timezone, yet this school was having a "sleepover" so our 12.30pm was going to be their 6.30pm (the day before).

Through some research:

• Blogging through the Fourth Dimension (great article with hints and ideas, including a comprehensive "jobs list".
• Mystery Skype- What is it?
• Our First Mystery Skype! (Jann Kwasnicki, Beach Grove Elementary)

 and with some ideas from my Canadian partner teacher, we decided on the following format for the session:

1. Introductions (5 minutes) - each class will share a short introduction, test connections.

2. Mystery Hangout (20 minutes) - classes will exchange clues to find out where each other lives.

3. Creating questions (5-10 minutes) - Classes will separately formulate questions for the other class that they are interested in- Will not be interacting through the Hangout at this time

4. Question period (20 minutes) - classes will exchange questions back and forth

5. Good-Byes (5 minutes) - classes will share their good-bye remarks and we will disconnect

There are 2 main ways that a Mystery Hangout can be facilitated:

• like a game of 20 questions, each class asking Yes/No style questions until the location is found
• clue giving, where each team prepares clues in advance to feed to the other team to help locate them in the world (we first gave clues to Australia, then to Melbourne, then to Mount Waverley)- this was the option we went with!

Preparation

The day before was an important session to outline expectations of the roles- check out our Google Doc with the roles and a brief description.

We also discussed and brainstormed clues for our own location- Australia/Melbourne/Mount Waverley. We used a shared Google Doc for students to add in clues and then as a class tried to order them from most difficult too most obvious. We initially found it difficult to come up with clues that wouldn't immediately lead them to the answer with Google- e.g. if we said we have an emu on our coat of arms, Google would immediately give you Australia. There was lots of rich discussion about broader clues and also how search engines on the internet worked.

On the Day

Student excitement was at fever pitch (parents even asking me what we were doing today because their child was hurrying their whole household up to make sure they got to school on time!). There was lots of speculation about where the other school could be and lots of countries ruled out because of their timezones (little did they know!).  

Feedback

In order to gauge students ideas about what worked well and how it could be improved, I designed a simple Google Form to get their responses. Here is some of the feedback:

On a scale of 1-10, how much did you enjoy the Mystery Hangout?

What did you enjoy most about the Hangout?

"Being able to have the class work as a team"

"Because we got to talk to people all of the way from Canada and we got to know more about their culture."

"That we all had to work together to try and work it out by doing our job!"

"What I enjoyed most was probably when we got to ask questions and answer them to learn about the other school and I also enjoyed researching and the whole mystery kind of feeling it gave you during the whole thing."

What could we do better next time?
"If we had less think tanks. If we had more runners. The placement of groups. More google researchers. No one on the whiteboard because the clues were up on IWB. Think tank on the floor in a circle."
"Increase the roles and explain more about them. More thinking time to prepare the questions."

"Have more runners and researchers"

"Make the think tank smaller, about 5 people"

To have a read of our "reporters" version of events, complete with their photos, please visit our class blog.

I have maintained contact with the Canadian teacher and we are hoping to plan some further collaboration between our two schools in 2015. I am looking forward to 2015 and the opportunity to plan more Mystery Hangouts and to use technology to connect our classroom locally, nationally and internationally.

Please comment below if you too have used Mystery Hangouts and also if you have any interesting resources or websites that would help me and other teachers as we explore this exciting concept!

Google Forms in Schools

Google Forms are an often underused element of the Google Apps for Education suite. Here I will share 3 different examples that I have played with in my primary classroom.

Student Peer Feedback
As part of our oral language curriculum, students present fortnightly presentations to the class on a range of topics. There are a number of elements that we have focused on and following on from just having teacher assessment, we created as a class, the following Google Form as a peer assessment rubric. Students (with 1:1 devices), would complete the survey following the presentation, providing immediate feedback to the presenter.
*I initially created the template and then each student would create a copy, and share their link on the day of their talk. This way the feedback was only viewable by the presenter (owner).



Student Pre and Post Assessment
Thanks to Anthony Speranza (check out his great blog here) for inspiring my interest in this incredibly powerful use of Google Forms. At this stage I have only just scratched the surface, creating a pre-assessment (that will also be used as post assessment) for a 5/6 "Fractions" unit. Using Flubaroo add-on, the test is graded immediately and allows targeted teaching from the very beginning of the unit. Following the unit and with the pre and post data, effect sizes can be calculated. If this interests you, please read Anthony's blog and his slides from his presentation at ISTE 2014- it goes into great detail and truly outlines the power of Forms for a whole range of assessment- pre, post and formative.



Staff Feedback
A quick and easy way to gather feedback from staff is to design a form that can be emailed out with the click of a button. At the beginning of this year, new to my role as ICT leader and new to the school, I designed the following Form to get a snapshot of staff competencies, attitudes and uses of ICT.



I'm sure these 3 ideas are only scratching the surface of Forms and how they can be used in the school setting. Please leave comments and share any thoughts and ideas of how you have or could use Forms to enhance teaching and learning.

Cooliris 3D Photo Wall Tool

Here is a cool web 2.0 tool (also available as an iPad app), that displays photos as a 3D wall. Ideal for websites and blogs! No login required, just need to have your photos in a Picasaweb album (and make sure it is permissioned to public access) or you can also use Flickr.
Make your own at: Cooliris