This week St Andrew’s College has joined in the national celebrations of Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori with a number of different activities. For the first time, we decided to run a Digital Scavenger Hunt that was aimed at getting ākonga (students) and kaiako (teachers) engaging in the celebrations in a fun way through using technology.
This was achieved using a Digital Scavenger Hunt, whereby students had to complete a number of tasks that accrued points based on the level of difficulty or effort required. The following poster was created using Canva and posted around the College and also on the news stream of our Moodle LMS
A handwoven harakeke pikau was 1st Prize
Initially, I was unsure of the best technology to get students to submit their photos and videos to a central location easily, and without needing a specific app or account. I tried to crowdsource some suggestions through my PLN (Professional Learning Network) on Twitter, with ideas of using Padlet, Cluster, Instagram and Google Drive all being suggested. I also thought about setting up an open course on our Moodle site that students could submit photos and videos for the competition through, however the reality is that it is still not super easy from a mobile phone to do this.
In the end, I settled on using the relatively new “File Request” feature that is available free with a Dropbox.com account. The beauty of this is that it significantly lowers the barrier of entry for students as:
They did not require a personal Dropbox account themselves
They didn’t need a specific app on their phone – it worked through a mobile browser on any platform (we tested on iOS, Windows and Android). We used a QR Code and shortened URL to make it easier to type on a phone – http://bit.ly/stac-mlw
Any files they submitted were visible only to me as the Dropbox account – students could not see the entries of anyone else which was important.
Students entered their name and email address when submitting files, so all entries were easily identifiable and Dropbox emailed me as the account owner when a submission was made.
To assist students with how to submit their entries, I made an instructional video using ScreenFlow 6 and a nice new feature in version 6 is the ability to record the screen of your mobile phone. This allowed me to show what to do on the phone to upload photos and video, whilst simultaneously showing what it looked like on the Dropbox account as the files were submitted:
Video showing how to submit photos for the Digital Scavenger Hunt directly from your mobile phone
The competition proved most popular in our Preparatory School, with the majority of entries coming from Year 7 students. Here are a couple of example photos that were entered:
Future Ideas:
I had a chat with Mr Tom Adams, our eLearning Integrator, at the end of this competition and we both agreed that this is an idea that could be recycled easily for other purposes. Now that we know that Dropbox File Requests is an easy way to submit and receive files via mobile phones this could be used for other Digital Scavenger Hunts with a different theme.
One idea could be an orientation programme for new students, aimed to get them going around the campus to learn where different places/services are located. There are some specific apps aimed at doing this, such as Scavify, but building your own would probably not be too difficult either. In the end, this was a fun and relatively easy activity to build into our celebration of Te Reo Māori at St Andrew’s College.
Last week John Parsons from Simulate 2 Educate ran 45 minute sessions with students in each year level of Year 9-13 at St Andrew’s College, along with an after school Professional Development hour with teachers. The day finished with an evening parent session, that included a candid outline of the challenges facing students and parents when it comes to cyber security and technology usage.
John’s presentations were engaging and humorous and he succeeded in connecting with the students at all year levels, whilst delivering an unflinchingly real message of the risky behaviour happening online. Pleasingly, this was entirely absent of any elements of judgement because of their age; instead he highlighted the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars are being lost annually by adults making poor decisions or being duped online.
Idle curiosity and social engineering are powerful factors that drive decision making and both are exploited through risky online behaviour. John highlighted this with two examples:
If a student found a USB stick lying outside the gates of the school and they took it home, plugged it into the family computer and found a file on there named “click me.docx”. Curiosity might drive them to open that file which could lead to the installation of a keystroke logging app which would collect and send typed information allowing the original owner of the USB stick to receive confidential information such as online banking or Facebook usernames/passwords.
If a Facebook user received a message saying “You should see the picture that David has shared of you online, click this link to view”. The hook here is basically everyone knows somebody called “David” so it has an element of potential truth and instead of seeing the image they are redirected to a squeeze page which might solicit their first and last names, and either their cell phone number or email address. Worse still, it may include a download file/link to see the picture but all it really installs is a keystroke logger.
The reality for our students is that they are born into a super-connected world in a way that their parents never were. Typically, when adults think of privacy they generally mean or refer to someone else taking care of the security of information to prevent someone from accessing it inappropriately. John’s message to students was essentially that view of privacy is dead and now the responsibility is all around self-control where the individual needs to take complete ownership of the sharing of their personal details and manage this themselves.
Every single one of you in this room is going to be subjected to a Google search by a prospective employer … I know over 96 boys and girls who can not get part time jobs because of content that their friends have posted online about them.
John Parsons (Simluate 2 Educate)
For this reason, John said, a student’s real CV is their online, digital footprint. Therefore they need to control this as tightly as possible by not allowing people to capture and share photos that make you vulnerable. Interestingly, John shared three ways that individuals are profiled by businesses and these went beyond just being in a photo in a compromising way:
The pictures that people upload – do they lack or demonstrate empathy? Employers and Universities will ask this question of prospective employees/students. In other words, what kind of person would upload and share a photo that embarrasses or exploits another person in a vulnerable situation
How do people talk to each other and what kind of content are they sharing and promoting online? Does it lack or demonstrate empathy? This is a key message as it’s very easy to be a digital bystander who perhaps didn’t upload the original content, but by liking or commenting on it can make you complicit.
The company you keep – what sort of behaviour is going on in photos you are tagged in and what sort of people are you following and communicating with in your social networks.
John Parsons used this video to highlight the risks and attitudes to sharing highly personal content online.
Practical Steps Students Can Take:
A number of keys were provided to enable students to make better decisions online:
Stop communicating online whenever you receive a request or comment that makes you feel uncomfortable. If you stop responding to any messages you are taking control of the situation.
Screenshot the communication / request that made you feel uncomfortable in the first place. By collecting evidence of this you are again taking control of the situation.
Print or store the screenshots in a secure folder or location that can be shared with a trusted adult such as parents who can help students in this situation.
Don’t let technology, or the people that use it, erode the values that your family have given to you – you’re too valuable to allow technology to do this
John Parsons (Simulate 2 Educate)
This message came through time and again throughout the presentation: that the students are unique and too valuable to allow themselves to be exploited online. John further dared the students to care – to not walk past people who are in need (whether this is physically in person or online). He encouraged them to ask a student if they are ok and how they’re feeling if they had observed unkind or unhelpful things online directed at that student. Finally, he urged them to not cheapen themselves but to instead nurture and protect their identity.
Reflections:
These messages from John are timely and need to be consistently delivered to students, staff and parents on a regular basis because of the real risks that can be associated with content shared online. Making poor decisions in this area is not confined to teenagers, as evidenced by some of these high profile examples:
Whilst students increasingly have a “post first, think it through later” mentality when it comes to sharing all elements of their lives, the potential impact on their well being and prospective employment and study is significant.
Ultimately, Digital Citizenship is everyones responsibility and by following the advice of John Parsons and exhibiting self-control in what they share, students are taking the first step towards valuing themselves and their reputation.
OneNote is central to the pedagogy in my classroom and school. When you walk through the building you can witness the everyday use of the application from Year 4 to Year 8. You will see Active Boards where teachers annotate writing samples in the Content Library for students to use as a reference for their own learning. Students are huddled around their laptops debating which sources of information are most relevant to include in a shared notebook, and staff are reviewing meeting notes shared through a Professional Learning Group’s OneNote.
Preparatory School Inquiry Learning Model
St. Andrew’s College uses a custom designed Inquiry Pathway—the core of which is built around helping students develop a collaborative approach to learning. The approach is question-driven, encouraging students to find the answers themselves, coming to their own conclusions. As a teacher, this is exciting; we plan and facilitate but cannot predict the final outcome.
Having planned an inquiry around national identity in the 21st century, I had posed a problem to my class: The Christchurch earthquakes of 2011 had left a long lasting scar on both the economy and identity of the city. Tourism was dwindling, with visitors flying in and quickly moving on to other parts of New Zealand’s South Island. I challenged my students to answer the question, “What does it mean to be a Kiwi in the 21st century?” and also find a way to bring tourists back to our city.
Students formed collaborative groups and created their own shared notebooks. They planned, questioned and researched their Kiwi icons. They interviewed parents and discussed how families from a variety of cultural backgrounds celebrated being “Kiwis” and what being a New Zealander meant to them. All of which was documented in each group’s shared OneNote Notebook.
Students began asking if they could book laptops to work together in our shared learning spaces outside the physical space of the room. They loved having the flexibility to be able to work together around a PC or laptop and then continue collaborating using OneNote at home, completely away from the physical space of the school, in the evenings. Students were so enthralled with the inquiry unit and ability to work together in real-time through OneNote. Parents even began commenting on how they had never seen their students so excited to return from school and get started on their homework.
Part of the inquiry was looking at how we could bring tourists back to Christchurch. This was where Minecraft was introduced to the class. Students brought in devices running the pocket edition and connected to shared realms via the school’s Wi-Fi. As well as working as a team to answer the big inquiry question, members of each group had individually focused on an aspect of Kiwi culture. I asked the students if they could build a theme park with Kiwiana-themed rides that incorporated elements from their inquiries.
Before long, the class was a buzzing hub of self-directed learning. Students were writing presentation speeches from their inquiry notebooks while Minecraft experts built bigger and better Kiwiana rides to showcase their learning. In the evenings, groups continued developing and improving their learning in preparation for the big day.
By the end of the third term of 2014, OneNote became a standard classroom tool. Having seen the benefits, families had started purchasing laptops for their students to use in our class. This again caused a chain reaction. Students with access to their own devices were using OneNote more, which in turn meant that more students began arriving with laptops.
This had to be managed carefully, since having a laptop in Year 6 is not required. I was wary of technology being used as a substitution tool and made sure that in my planning any use of OneNote or any other tools we were using was in ways that enhanced or allowed learning to take place in a way that could not be done without a device.
It was around this time that Sam McNeill, Director of ICT for the college, brought in six Surface Pro 3s to trial, and I was fortunate to be asked to use one in the prep school. Having always been a believer in the creative power of the pen, I was instantly won over by having the best of both worlds at my fingertips—a fully functional Windows tablet with a stylus that allowed me to write down ideas, thoughts and comments directly into my OneNote Notebooks. It did not take long for a few students to begin arriving with their own Surface tablets!
In the final term of the 2014 school year, we focused on our use of narrative; enhancing writing features and broadening our vocabulary. Using both OneNote and Minecraft seemed like a natural fit.
As a class, we read through “The Warlock of Firetop Mountain,” written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone in 1982. This book was one of the first “single-player gamebooks” and was the first of what was to become a successful series of pick-a-path gamebooks called “Fighting Fantasy.”
The students loved it. We discussed modern game worlds, from Fable to World of Warcraft. How could we emulate those fantastic “Fighting Fantasy” stories using the technology at our disposal, and how could the technology enhance the quality of our writing? We wanted our readers to have the same sense of choice and adventure we had experienced reading “Warlock,” while being able to share our writing without needing to produce any form of print media.
“Minecraft brings out the creativity in me. I love remaking my story Minecraft and improving my writing.”
—Mila
Through the insertion of hyperlinks connecting pages, students found an easy way to provide choices for the reader, and as notebooks stored on Onedrive could be easily shared, the audience for their writing expanded quickly. Students were sharing and collaborating on their adventure stories by allowing editing rights to certain classmates deemed to have the relevant skillsets to be seen as official class editors.
“Using Minecraft made my imagination go wild with thoughts!”
—Kinda
Our Year 6 students took Tam’s idea and expanded upon it by using Minecraft to both plan and develop their writing, as well as to review and revise the content, descriptive phrases and vocabulary. As their Minecraft worlds grew, so did their stories, which were housed in OneNote. In some cases, we had 10-year-old boys who were not big fans of writing producing 5000-word interactive pick-a-path stories. We published a blog entry detailing the OneNote and Minecraft pick-a-path story.
“Minecraft was helpful because it made me notice all the little details in my narrative that were never in my original bubble plan.”
—Padric
By 2015, most teachers in the prep school had embraced OneNote. The superb OneNote Class Notebook app creator was now an important element of Office 365, and students were appreciating the structure of the Collaboration Space, Content Library and their own personal sections.
Teachers were appreciating the organizational simplicity of adding resources and lessons into the Content Library for students to use in their own sections. Within my Year 6 class, multiple students arrived at the beginning of the year armed with Surface Pro 3s.
This was also the first year that I started using Minecraft in Math. The students in my group weren’t huge fans of math. I knew they were capable of so much more, but their personal attitude towards the subject was that it was hard; comments at the start of the year were mostly, “I’m not good at math.” My focus was to change their attitudes to that of a growth mindset where they say, “I’m not good at math, yet!” Continue reading →
This week has seen the culmination of a huge amount of work over the last four months, with Tutors being given access to what is being called the Tutor Quadrant Report. Below is a screencast showing some of the features of this (with identifying details blanked out):
Demonstrating The Tutor Quadrant Report
Initial feedback from Tutors has been very positive as they recognise this new report presents a significant step forward in terms of:
Ease of access – using their existing school username/password to access the report on any device with a browser and anywhere (they are not restricted to being on the College campus).
The collation of disparate data presented in an easily comprehensible, highly visual format. Previously, to obtain information on attendance, NCEA results, discipline and Fortnightly Notes would have required dozens of clicks, different windows and reports, and even using different platforms (both Synergetic and Sharepoint).
Speed – the reports load very quickly in the browser.
It is satisfying to hear this type of feedback given the significant level of investment and effort that has been made in developing this platform from where we were 12 months ago.
The abbreviated presentation from AIS NSW ICT Leadership Conference 2016
Some of the key points from this presentation include:
There are multiple ways you can use Microsoft PowerBI, we have explored two methods of deployment:
Manually generating reports in the free PowerBI Desktop App and publishing and storing content in the Azure blob in the cloud (quick and easy, but limited security options)
Developing an on-premise data warehouse and using ETL processes to extract data from various sources before loading into a tabular data model and connecting to the cloud via SSAS Gateway Connector. This is also very secure when implemented with row level security.
PowerBi was preferred at St Andrew’s College for a number of reasons, including:
It’s scaleable – educational pricing for Pro licenses is affordable (~$4/m per user) and easily managed within the Office365 Licensing Administration area
It is easy to access – teachers can use their existing school username/password so there is limited barriers to entry and it is accessible via a browser from any device.
Visualisations of data are excellent. The ability to transform what was previously stored in spreadsheets and rows and columns of data into easily comprehensible displays is critical. There is a range of default visualisations as well as third party generated ones.
Next Steps:
Time to talk! The power of a visual to highlight a student trending in the wrong direction.
With the release of the Tutor Quadrant Report, planning is already underway for the development of further reports for both teaching staff as well as administrative staff. The migration to PowerBI of an existing Tableau report that our Director of Development used has been completed and this enables her to now access data refreshed daily and drill down using the self-service elements of PowerBI. Pleasingly, she has already identified a number of enhancements she would like to see – this is something we anticipated would occur once the end users started getting more meaningful access to the data.
I was recently invited to speak at the weekly St Andrew’s College Chapel Service. One of the features of these services is the Deputy Head Prefects walking up the centre aisle at the conclusion of the first hymn, and saying “Today we remember ….” and naming an Old Collegian who was killed in action.
For my Chapel, I researched Barry Martin, student #101 at St Andrew’s, who attended from 1918-25 in the Preparatory School and completed his first tour in the RAF before volunteering for a second and eventually completing 46 operational missions over occupied Europe, before being killed on 2nd February 1943.
To visually represent Barry’s life, I opted to build a Google Earth Tour (something I shared on at the recent TeachMeet hosted at St Andrew’s) and indicate places of significance such as his birth (Waiau, North Canterbury), where he attended school (here at St Andrew’s College), through to his various flight training and operational bases (Canada, Mildenhall and Oakington) and his final resting place (Rotterdam General Cemetery). Google Earth tours are something we have encouraged teachers to use and some good examples include:
The yellow pins in this Google Earth screenshot represent targets Barry Martin navigated his crew to, over the course of his 46 flights.
The entire story that I shared at the Chapel Service can be seen in the video at the top of the blog, however you can see the start of the narrated Google Earth tour here. What has been interesting to me is the amount of teachers and students who were really surprised by the power of Google Earth, having never really used it in any meaningful context before. Consequently, Tom Adams (our eLearning Integrator) has run some professional development sessions for staff interested in using it with their students.
The reality is, whilst the visualisations of Barry Martin’s journey added engagement through technology, the researching of the information for the presentation itself was almost entirely dependent on the power of the Internet. I had used Microsoft OneNote to easily compile a working document of information, starting with links to relevant websites and notes to myself on their usefulness:
The ease of being able to drag ‘n drop and cut ‘n paste information into this notebook accelerated the research considerably:
Screenshot of my OneNote notebook for researching Old Collegians
One of my goals in this research was to bring to life Barry Martin’s story and show more about him as person and not just a statistic from World War II. Through the searching of PapersPast I was able to find references to Barry’s pre-war life, including his engagement and attendance at an Old Collegian dance at the Dunsandel Hall with his fiancee, which sounded like an eventful night with the power cutting out!
Other sources that proved invaluable in finding out more about Barry’s life included Google Books, an unexpected source that showed up the research of Stephen Harris in his book Under a Bomber’s Moon and the relationship between his great Uncle Col Jones and Barry Martin. It is from this source that I obtained the photo below of Barry with unnamed friends, along with the entertaining account of Barry cooking up a storm in the barracks with tins of lambs tongues and tomato sauce sent to him from New Zealand:
Original Dutch Police Report on the crash of Barry Martin’s Stirling bomber.
Other sources were not so easy, but did manage to turn up gold for this research. I optimistically posted on the Wings Over New Zealand Aviation Forum and was thrilled to get a reply out of that which led to obtaining a copy of the original Dutch Police Report that detailed the circumstances and location of the crashed Stirling Bomber on the night that Barry Martin’s plane was shot down and he was killed. This was eventually sourced from the book “De Crash Van De Padvinder” by P. van der Leer.
This highlights that whilst the Internet can be an outstanding source of quick and accessible information, the importance of human interaction (even if that is via forums, email and text messaging) along with a curiosity not to give up, remains a vital part of any good research. The Christchurch City library had all three volumes of For Your Tomorrow by Errol Martin which was invaluable for factual details, and the St Andrew’s College library had historical records of Barry’s attendance at the College, 98 years ago.
Barry Martin’s medals – note the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) on the left. Barry never knew he had been awarded this, as it was announced only two days after his disappearance.
It was very gratifying to be able to harness the power of technology to shine some light on an Old Collegian of St Andrew’s College and the ultimate sacrifice he made.
UPDATE:
This is the recording of an earlier Chapel Service that I gave on James Samuel Cartwright. He was a former teacher at St Andrew’s College and All Black triallist and was tragically killed only days after the D-Day Normandy invasion:
A TeachMeet is an organised but informal meeting (in the style of an unconference) for teachers to share good practice, practical innovations and personal insights in teaching with technology.
Participants volunteer (via the TeachMeet website) to demonstrate good practice they’ve delivered over the past year, or discuss a product that enhances classroom practice.
To help promote the event, I took to a new tool I’ve been using recently called Canva which allows you to very quickly and easily develop stylish posters, images and social media banners through their website:
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One of the key reasons TeachMeets are successful is that presenters are limited to only 2minutes or 7minutes for their presentations. This results in a fast-paced event and a range of different ideas and solutions being shared. It also means that preparation for the volunteer presenters is kept at a minimum – it’s not onerous to share something you’re already doing in your classroom or researching to give a go.
From the slides above, you can see there were seven presenters who shared on the following topics:
Wilj Dekkers (St Andrew’s College) Using MineCraft and OneNote for Creative Writing
Tom Neumann (Riccarton High) Using an alphanumeric self marking video game in Moodle to review content of Yr11 Economics
Sue McLachlan (Hagley College) Using OneNote Learning Tools in the classroom
Tam Yuill Proctor (St Andrew’s College) Using OneNote as a Digital Teacher’s Planbook
Karyn Gray (Haeta Community Campus) The Quest for Personalisation of Learning- My Thinking, My Research, My Questions
Schira Withers (Our Lady Of The Star Of The Sea) How we as educators can help students with low working memories improve their self-management skills using digital technologies, thus allowing them to experience success and move from a fixed to growth mindset.
Donna Jones (St Andrew’s College) Using a 3D app to inspire creative thought and ideas for creative writing.
This week I’ve had the privilege of attending, as well as co-presenting, at the annual Microsoft Analyst Summit for Asia Pacific, hosted at the St Regis Hotel in Singapore.⊗ The focus of this summit was Fuelling Customer Digital Transformation Through Innovation and was an opportunity for Microsoft to present their product and solutions roadmaps for industry analysts from the likes of Forrester, IDC and Gartner (amongst others) and where possible, highlight the value through the voice of partners and clients.
This is how I ended up at the Summit – Anne Taylor, from Microsoft NZ, inquired if I would be interested in co-presenting with Guenter Weimer the General Manager of Windows & Devices Marketing for Microsoft Asia Pacific. This seemed like a great opportunity to build on the 2015 video case study below that showcased some of the amazing work from our teachers and students:
Guenter had already seen the video and decided he wanted to show it in its entirety to the Analysts present, before discussing a few other developments at St Andrew’s, including:
How do we measure success when it comes to the integration of technology in education
To what extent has technology such as OneNote & Office365 increased collaboration amongst students and also between students and teachers
Did teachers need encouraging to adopt the use of a digital pen for inking on their Surface devices, or was it a natural transition
In a BYOD environment that allows choice within parameters, how do we ensure cross platform compatibility and successful outcomes
With an audience of over 90 industry technology analysts, I was unsure what sort of reception a session that focused on education would have, however I was really pleased that after Guenter and I finished talking, there were a number of insightful questions from the analysts during the open Q&A session that followed.
Additionally, based on the Twitter feedback from the Summit’s hashtag of #MSAnalystSummit the session was well received:
Fantastic to hear from @samuelmcneill on the use of Surface tablets by students & staff at St Andrews in Christchurch #MSAnalystSummit
Being the first conference of this sort that I’ve attended, I was really pleased to discover how open and engaging the different analysts were that I spoke with during the various breakouts and meals over the course of the two days.
I was also privileged to listen to some phenomenal presentations from other industry experts, including Mr Simon Challis the Managing Director from Ryman Healthcare in New Zealand, talking about how they are using Surface Pro tablets with every client in their retirement villages. Another interesting and relevant session was from Mr Mahendra Vaswani the Director of Teaching and Learning from Hale School in Perth, Australia.
As part of his presentation, he discussed the Hale @ Home programme they run which is described on their website as:
Hale@home is an innovative online learning programme that helps students prepare for the transition to Hale as a boarder. The boys undertake the programme in Year 6, prior to attending the School.
Hale@home provides a welcoming, online forum where boys meet others on the same journey to becoming a boarder. The programme is designed to build their confidence, familiarise them with technology and introduce them to their fellow boarders; all while they are still at home.
This is an outstanding initiative and a fantastic demonstration of how technology can bring both current, and future, students together into a virtual classroom.
Overall, this Summit has been a valuable learning and networking experience for me and represented a great opportunity to showcase the innovation happening at St Andrew’s College to a wider audience.
⊗ Full Disclosure: Microsoft covered all travel costs and expenses for me to attend this summit.
This post was written by Mr Wilj Dekkers who attended the Annual E2 Conference. He is the second St Andrew’s College teacher to be invited to this global conference, after Mr Ben Hilliam attended in 2015.
Mr Wilj Dekkers
Microsoft Education hold an annual event that celebrates the achievements of educators who combine pedagogy and technology in their classrooms and schools. The event is held in a different global location each year, with 2016 seeing Microsoft Innovative Educator experts (MIE experts) converge on Budapest, Hungary.
I was fortunate to be selected as one of five New Zealand educators to attend this year. The E2 educator conference ran during the week of March 7th and was based at the Corinthia Hotel in the heart of Budapest.
300 educators from across the globe were given opportunities to collaborate and share our experiences integrating technology within our schools in ways that enhance and move learning forward.
As with every conference, a series of keynotes and discussion panels provided all delegates with inspiration and thought provoking ideas.
Anthony Salcito, vice president of Worldwide Education at Microsoft, spoke to us about recent trends and the move towards 21st century skills in education. His keynote reinforced that the world our children are growing up in will require new skill sets; that employers are looking for collaborative, critical problem solvers. I was impressed that all the concepts discussed came from a pedagogical background and never placed technology above learning but made it an integral part of the lifelong learning process. As Anthony said, “What we’re here to do is help every student on the planet achieve more.”
Two of the highlights of the morning keynotes were Stephen Reid and Jacqueline Russell.
Stephen runs a company called Immersive Minds and for the past 20 years has been using technology as a learning tool in classrooms. Stephen works with students and teachers to create new learning environments though a mix of digital and real world tools, developing confidence in the learning process on both sides as well as competence in the use of technology to support pedagogy, classroom management and assessment. Stephen presented how he uses Minecraft to help develop Key Competencies through History and Science. I attended one of Stephen’s workshops and spent time speaking with him about my own use of Minecraft to enhance literacy and accepted his kind offer to help us at St Andrew’s with ideas we are developing using Minecraft as part of the school centenary.
Jacqueline presented a keynote focussed on the Surface Pro 4. Before leaving for the conference, Jacqueline sat with her daughter and talked about where she was going and together, mother and daughter used the Surface and stylus to research, collate and create a digital scrapbook within MS OneNote. This was an honest representation of the power and ease of this tool when placed in the hands of children. This reflected my own views as detailed at the end of last year when Microsoft interviewed and filmed teacher’s perspectives of the Surface device being used as a learning tool.
The workshops this year were diverse with subjects such as flipping your classroom using OneNote, Surface and digital inking to engage students; Minecraft application throughout Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (STEAM); building a world in Project Spark that reflected the collective understanding of the ideal learning environment; digital literacy and creative programming in the classroom.
One particular workshop was run by Nikkie Laing, a Microsoft Innovative Educator Fellow from Opaheke School in Auckland. Nikkie’s workshop centred on the use of Office 365 SharePoint Sites. In detail Nikkie shared how to minimize the time teachers spend collating and preparing resources and the time learners spend looking for materials and get on with learning. Her presentation and workshop was so well structured and delivered that she won the prize of best presentation of the conference. An overview of Nikkie’s workshop is below.
The conference also provided opportunities to showcase what each educator had been working on back in their own countries. I shared the use of Minecraft and OneNote to write detailed pick-a-path narratives. A large number of delegates were quite interested in what the children in Year 6 had achieved with Mike Tholfsen, the Product Manager for OneNote recognising what the children had worked on. Mike was very interested in how OneNote was being used for learning at our school, being particularly excited by the inclusion of Minecraft in the writing process. A journalist, Jordan Shapiro also came over, interested in what was happening at St Andrew’s. This has led to a mention in his article for Forbes magazine:
Another teacher tells me how he uses Minecraft to teach creative writing. “I used to tell them to write a story and they’d give me these blank stares. Now I ask them to act out a story in the Minecraft world first and then, together, we figure out how to articulate it in writing.” He describes how the virtual block world lets him walk his students back to specific locations so he can interrogate them about the details. “I encourage them to get more descriptive and specific; I tell them to imagine how things might smell, what the grass might feel like under their feet.”
Overall the experience has both reinforced my beliefs in the importance of integrating technology purposefully in learning and motivated me to expand upon my own pedagogical learning. The people I met have continued to amaze me with their enthusiasm and creativity. The New Zealand and Australian contingent have remained in contact post conference, having developed both a close network and long lasting friendship. We are already planning continued collaborative, cross Tasman learning opportunities for our students.
How often do you want to access the internet but can’t because your device is connected via Wi-Fi to the classroom projector? It’s one or the other … but not both. St Andrew’s College has worked with Epson to find a way to do things differently.
“Epson gave us some sample units, and we trialled some existing units in our preparatory school before we did a major upgrade,” said the College’s Director of ICT Sam McNeill, noting the units were in place for six months. “We wanted proof of the concept.”
By Term 4 last year, the College had rolled out 35-40 Epson EB-535W short-throw projectors.
“One of the key drivers for upgrading to networked projectors was our use of OneNote,” explained McNeill. “We’re gradually becoming a compulsory BYOD school and the majority of teachers now choose a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 or 4. Because we use OneNote, everything that goes up onto a projector screen also gets automatically saved for later in the students’ notebooks.”
Two underlying needs for a projector upgrade were also present, the first being teachers wanting not to be tethered to a projector by a VGA or HDMI cable. The second, more importantly, was St Andrew’s experiences with other technologies.
“We’ve played around with WiDi and Miracast devices, and had varied results.
“The Netgear Push2TV worked okay but still had interference issues because we had 30-40 devices in a classroom,” recalled McNeill. “The ScreenBeam dropped out from time to time, and had some security issues. Also, the pairing process between Miracast and a Windows 8.1 or 10 device was challenging for some teachers.”
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Epson’s EB-535W projectors are networked and have their own IP address which is displayed on the projector’s screen, and a signal is received from a teacher’s Surface Pro via the school’s wireless network. Rather than going from one device to another (point-to-point), this allows for a highly stable connection, not unlike live internet streaming.
St Andrew’s separates all projector traffic on to a separate VLAN (with a dedicated switch), meaning it was isolated and would never affect general school-wide Wi-Fi speeds. All installation of the projectors was done by the in-house ICT team.
Enticingly, Epson’s projectors did not require a network upgrade, they could be used on the existing wireless infrastructure.
“We wanted to be able to use them for the internet and project the teacher’s screens at the same time. What we like about the Epson is, you don’t have to fiddle around with the Windows configuration. It has its own standalone software (EasyMP), and it just works.
Just one downside has come with the roll-out of Epson’s projectors.
“The trade-off in all of this is that video frame rate is reduced,” added McNeill. “If a teacher wants to play a movie, they’ll need to connect through HDMI for an optimal experience.”
St Andrew’s is using Epson’s advanced networking solutions with its projectors in various ways.
“We have the central management software, which allows us to see how the projectors are running, when bulbs blow, and see how teachers are connecting, all from our ICT office. We even have a scheduled off function, in case teachers forget to turn theirs off.”
Currently, the projector network is only accessible by teachers, not by students.
“It is possible, under moderator control from the teacher, but we haven’t had the teacher demand for it at this stage. Perhaps when they become more fluent and familiar with using wireless projectors, they’ll see the value in students’ BYOD devices projecting to it.”
St Andrew’s College is in Merivale, Christchurch. With a roll of 1,350, it’s a fully-independent, co-educational school for pre-school to Year 13 day and boarding students.
Mr Ferguson is one of five New Zealanders to be selected to attend the Apple Distinguished Educators conference in Berlin, Germany.
Attending an ADE Institute provides powerful opportunities for collaboration and ongoing professional growth for ADE alumni members. This 4-day intensive professional learning experience, will bring 400 ADEs together to collaborate, share, and learn. By collaborating directly with peers from across the world, ADEs will return home with a shared sense of purpose as they develop content and promote powerful ideas for improving teaching and learning worldwide.
To see the iBook about Collaborative Composition that Mr Ferguson wrote as a result of the 2015 ADE Institute in Singapore please visit:
This week St Andrew’s College has joined in the national celebrations of Te Wiki O Te Reo Māori with a number of different activities. For the first time, we decided to run a Digital Scavenger Hunt that was aimed at getting ākonga (students) and kaiako (teachers) engaging in the celebrations in a fun way through using technology.
Last week 
I was recently invited to speak at the weekly 
“Epson gave us some sample units, and we trialled some existing units in our preparatory school before we did a major upgrade,” said the College’s Director of ICT 
StAC e-Learning Stories 
