#CEM15 Guest Post – Explore The World With Mystery Skype

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Sam McNeill

This post was written for the Christchurch Connected Educators blog as part of Connected Educators Month of October 2015. You can read the original post here.

Mystery Skype is a fun activity being played by classrooms all over the world and presents a fantastic opportunity for students to become “global citizens” as they meet other students from around the country and globe. On their website, it is described as:

Mystery Skype is an educational game, invented by teachers, played by two classrooms on Skype. The aim of the game is to guess the location of the other classroom by asking each other questions.

The St Andrew’s College Preparatory School has completed many Mystery Skype sessions now, ranging from students in Year 3 through to Year 8 and the students always thoroughly enjoy the challenge of guessing the location of the other classroom. So far we have played with schools in:

Australia (Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland)
Singapore
USA (Oklahoma, Alabama, California, Delaware)
Russia (Sakhalin Island)

Given the time zone of New Zealand, there are many parts of the world where it is virtually impossible to connect (although check out this Skype we did with the Viking Museum in York, where students came before breakfast to connect)

The Mystery Skype to Russia was one of the more exciting and challenging Skypes, as the class was very small and every student appeared to have a different nationality. It turned out that it was an International School set up by Shell Oil and all of the students had parents involved in the oil industry. Here is a video of our Mystery Skype (If you’re interested in recording your Skype calls, check out this affordable plugin):

It’s interesting seeing how different teachers have prepared their students to play Mystery Skype – the American schools often have very formalised “jobs” where some students are researchers, others are questioners, whilst others hold up signs confirming if a question was answered correctly or not. Ultimately, it’s up to each teacher how they choose to play, but preparing students to think about how to ask effective closed questions is critical since answers can only be “yes” or “no”.

The temptation for students to zoom in and ask very detailed questions is almost overwhelming. For example, given the amount of American and Australian television we have in New Zealand our students can guess the accent of the students very quickly, but they tend to then ask very narrow questions such as “Are you in Los Angeles?” or “Are you in Sydney?” Teaching the effective use of atlases is really helpful and can then lead to more useful questions such as:

Are you landlocked?
Are you north of the equator?
Are you on the West Coast?

One of the real privileges I have had helping classes with Mystery Skype is the sharing of Māori culture with other schools that may never have seen any aspects of it before. The students in our Preparatory School jump at the opportunity to sing waiata and perform the College haka and invariably the students overseas love it:

Mr Craig Kemp, the teacher at the school in Singapore and an ex-pat Kiwi, tweeted the view from his classroom:

Another amazing Mystery Skype - this time we were WOWed by a haka from @samuelmcneill school and @pmu16 thank you! http://t.co/wcVQ1WwO2A
—
Craig Kemp (@mrkempnz) November 06, 2014

CONCLUSION:

Mystery Skype is a fun way to connect with classes all over the world and I would really encourage you to give it a go. It is easy to find other classes thanks to the Mystery Skype website and our experience has been the other teachers are thrilled to find classes in New Zealand because they are often “so far away.” Once a connection is made, it is fun to then re-connect and ask questions of the other class for curriculum related topics e.g. if you’re studying weather patterns or transport, why not Skype that class in the US and find out their experiences or views on these things? Finally, Mystery Skyping is contagious – once classes find out their friends in different classes have done it, they start asking their own teacher to get involved. Have fun!

Reflections from ULearn 2015

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Tom Adams

In the last week of the recent school holidays I, along with 5 other secondary staff, attended ULearn15. This annual conference, hosted by Core Education, is arguably the preeminent IT in education conference in New Zealand. This year it was held once again in Auckland – although I must admit to being excited at the possibility of it returning to Christchurch once a suitable post-earthquake venue is finally built!

uLearn15 aimed to allow its delegates to connect, collaborate, and innovate and make a difference by exploring:

Re-imagining Learners and Learning / Te whakaako
Re-imagining Teacher Practice / Te pūtoi ako
Re-imagining Leaders and Leadership / Te mahi rangatira

The clear thematic structure of the conference proved to be a very powerful aspect of ULearn, as it enable more clarification of the exact content of breakouts, and also allowed delegates to focus on one particular area of interest, if they wished.

THREE ENGAGING KEYNOTES:

A feature of uLearn is always the engaging Keynote speakers, and this year we were treated to three extremely engaging keynote presentations.

The first was the American educator, Grant Lichtman. In his speech Grant outlined his vision around generating a positive capacity for change within education. Of particular interest to me was his challenge to ask if your school is Dynamic, Adaptive, Permeable and Creative. The underlying aim of such an educational institution must be knowledge creation. Grant acknowledged that this journey will require all educators to break through the fear and inertia to change, saying that it is

“harder to change if we have been going well in the past. Change is Hard, but not in schools – its uncomfortable” .

A final resource that Grant referred to is the Stairway of Successful innovation. I found this resource particularly interesting as it allowed me to reflect on the changes that I am leading here at school and allowed me to reflect on the success of their implementation.

The second keynote speaker was Dr Ann Lieberman from the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. During her long, and distinguished career Dr Lieberman has developed a particular interest in Teacher Leadership and the role that teachers play in implementing and driving change within their schools. A focus of her talk was the success gained by the Teacher Learning and Leadership Program in Ontario, Canada. Dr Lieberman identified the successes that this program had enjoyed, particularly the professional value that was generated within the teaching fraternity. She was also keen to pint out the role that all teachers must play in leadership within their schools. She noted that

“conflict within change does not have to be destructive. Conflict can be constructive”

The final keynote address of the conference was particularly inspiring. Pat Snedden, the Chair of Manaiakalani Education Trust, took delegates on a journey describing the origins, current successes and future of this important trust which aims to improve educational outcomes for children in some of New Zealand’s most socio-economically disadvantaged communities. I had previously heard the story of this trust – but this presentation gave me a fuller understanding of the outstanding work that this group has done, and importantly their plans to help children in similar circumstances around New Zealand to enjoy the benefits accrued by this simply inspiring Trust.

BREAKING OUT:

The most crucial element of a delegates enjoyment and learning from a conference such as this, is the range of breakouts that you attend. This year I made a conscious effort to be on-the-ball regarding the opening of breakouts – to ensure that I got all my top choices, which I did.

Across the three days I attended 7 different Breakout sessions. All of these sessions were extremely well organised, interesting, and relevant to both my role here at St Andrew’s College, and the future direction of education in New Zealand.

One particularly interesting session was presented by Westley Field, an Australian educator. He initially reflected on the importance for a school to have a clear school-wide pedagogy; one that all staff can buy into. He continued, to speak about the importance of student well-being as a catalyst for academic success, and the implications that this has for schools.

“Resilience can be changed, and taught. Socratic questioning can be incorporated as a way to ensure that students are building resilience. This improvement must be happening constantly.”

One of the highlights of my conference was Mark Osborne giving an extremely interesting seminar around leading change in schools, leadership vs management, and the importance of preparing people for change. He also gave some clear strategies that should be considered in dynamic organisations such as schools. I particularly like the question

“what is the opportunity cost of NOT changing”

The session was particularly useful for me as a colleague, Ms Yuill-Proctor, was also in attendance. She remarks that she particularly enjoyed:

“looking at 1^st order change and 2^nd order change. How to make the transition from 2^nd order change into 1^st order change smoother.”

IMPACT OF THE CONFERENCE:

Part of the St Andrew’s College delegation enjoying some important social time at the uLearn Dinner.

Attending ULearn is always extremely interesting and worthwhile; I was very impressed with ULearn15. After three years of non-attendance, I was glad to see that the conference appears to be re-energised, and this has definitely rubbed off on me. All attendees from our school found it an extremely engaging and motivating three days.

Moving forward I have learnt a great deal about managing change within my job, and more importantly, supporting staff to engage more proactively with this process of change.

As usual uLearn was heavily tweeted by delegates – feel free to follow me. To catch up on the conference, check out archive tweets from @uLearnNZ or #ulearn15.

Integrating Student Data Into Moodle

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Sam McNeill

Moodle is the Learning Management System (LMS) used by St Andrew’s College at all year levels and is renowned for being very customisable due to it’s Open Source code base. Recently, we partnered with Catalyst NZ, experts in Open Source Software (OSS), on an integration project to extract data from the College’s MS-SQL based Student Management System (SMS) called Synergetic and display this to students directly in Moodle.

The project started with a request from the Deputy Rector, Mr Roland Burrows, for students to be able to see their Fortnightly Notes scores directly. This form of reporting is new in 2015 and the rationale behind these Fortnightly Notes is explained by Mr Burrows:

They provide the opportunity for teachers to regularly report to parents on the contribution that their son/daughter is making to his/her own learning through their attitude and effort

Parents can log into the Parent Portal to see a PDF summary of these scores that looks something like this:

A redacted example of a student’s Fortnightly Notes score

As the name implies, the Parent Portal is not available to students directly, so choosing Moodle was an obvious choice to display this data to students. Whilst considering the possible layout options of this data, we decided against replicating the table view that parents see above and instead decided to present a line graph to students that would visually reflect their attitude and effort in each subject across the entire year. Additionally, displaying Student Attendance information on a per-class basis, along with NCEA results-to-date would add real value for students at St Andrew’s so these features were added to the scope of the project.

CONFIGURATION:

To achieve these outcomes, we needed to partner with Catalyst for the Moodle configuration, and they proceeded to write a custom plugin that would extract data from the MS-SQL database powering Synergetic, import it into Moodle’s mySQL database and then present it to the students. To achieve this, three custom SQL views were created that collated only the information to be displayed in Moodle: NCEA summaries, Attendance percentages and Fortnightly Notes scores. A sample of this data can be seen in this gallery:

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New navigation options under Site Pages

Lastly, the Moodle theme used on the St Andrew’s College Moodle site was modified to include new navigation for students to access this information. Extensive testing was then completed on our development Moodle site to iron out bugs and ensure that the information was being displayed correctly.

DISPLAYING THE DATA:

It was decided to graph a student’s Fortnightly Notes score and Attendance information at the top of each course page in Moodle, so they could immediately see their effort and attendance on a per-class basis. This can be seen in the following animated GIF image as the graphs are generated in real time:

An animated image showing the Fortnightly Notes line graph and Attendance pie chart being generated on a student’s course page

However, to also replicate the Parent Portal summary view, a student could see the scores for all classes on a new page added under the “Site Pages” navigation menu:

Summary view of Fortnightly Notes scores and Class Attendance

For students working towards NCEA they can now see their recorded grades directly in their Moodle account:

A Yr11 Student’s NCEA results

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Working on this project was exciting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was our initial attempt to extract meaningful student data from our SMS and display it elsewhere. Secondly, we believe that providing this information to students visually, and displaying it to them every single time they log into their Moodle course pages, will encourage them with their effort and attitude in class. Lastly, it represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is possible to present to students in Moodle.

In many ways, this was a proof of concept: could we extract data and present it meaningfully to students in one of our primary learning platforms? Thanks to the customisation options within Moodle, we were able to achieve this and with other recent testing of Microsoft’s new Business Intelligence platform called PowerBI, we anticipate being able to add even more visual information to students in this way (for those interested, the animated graphs are powered by the open source rGraph tool).

Technology Boosts Champion Rugby Team

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Sam McNeill

The National Secondary Schools Co-Ed Champions of 2015, St Andrew’s College 1st XV. Mr Rod McIntosh is back row, far right.

The 1st XV rugby team from St Andrew’s College has enjoyed a record year in 2015, being crowned the National Secondary Schools Co-Ed Champions, winning the coveted Moascar Cup (only the 3rd South Island team to do so in the 100 years history of the cup), placing 4th in the local University of Canterbury Cup competition and beaten finalists in the Canterbury 7-a-side tournament.

In light of this success, I sat down with Rugby Director Mr Rod McIntosh to discuss how technology has contributed to the success of the team and he talked me through how they use video analysis to stimulate improvement amongst the players. The product being used by the team is advantage4me.co and when talking about this Mr McIntosh made some big claims in terms of the significance of video analysis as a contributing factor to the overall improvement and success of the team saying:

This has been one of the fundamental drivers of improvement in our learning environment. Because if you look at the learning profiles of athletes they tend to be visual/kinesthetic, and the third level is audio. So predominantly the kids need to see it and then they can do it and reproduce it. So we try to do a combination of those learning approaches to get the message across

Consequently, all games are recorded and then an agreed on policy plays out each weekend: the game must be uploaded to Advantage4Me and coded by Sunday lunchtime. The players must then have watched the clips and be prepared to review the game at a shared Monday lunchtime in the Sports Pavilion.

For the coding to be effective, the various clips must be categorised according to the high level game plan devised by the coaching team into:

General Play – Offence
General Play – Defence
Set Piece
Field Position / Clips of Interest

The various categories of coded clips along with a rate of Effective or Ineffective

To speed this process up, the team has an intern with the Crusaders help out. He is studying at the University of Canterbury doing the four year Bachelor of Sports Coaching (BSpC) specialising in coaching technique analysis. For an experienced intern, who attends practices and understands the high level game strategies it will take between 1-2hours to code a game.

Here is an example of two clips of game footage showing a set piece restart, the first that is won (StAC regained the ball) the second that was lost (kicked out on the full):

With all players expected to have watched the clips prior to the Monday lunchtime meeting that Mr McIntosh calls “The Brain Gym” session, it is a chance to drive home key concepts to the players visually and he commented:

The video analysis has been a really robust improvement in the team’s learning environment – players are now using a different vocabulary when describing their play and the game. They are using the language of the team’s offensive and defensive structures learnt from the video clips.

Here is an example of Mr McIntosh talking through a single play of the game and how he might break it down for the players:

A typical Brain Gym session would involve a minimum of three video clips that would be a mixture of things the team did well along with some work ons for the week of training. To further reinforce this, the team’s coaches can select specific clips from games or technique videos from YouTube and other video sources, and send those directly to players who can watch them individually and comment on the clip within the software. The coaching and management staff can check analytics to see how regularly players are logging in to review footage as well.

The aim is to enable the various units within the team, such as the tight forwards or back three, to review clips themselves and then feedback the analysis of those clips to the rest of the team which the coach described as evidence of “the highest level of learning.” Importantly, however, he takes a pragmatic view to using technology in that it absolutely must deliver value:

Like anything it is time consuming, but I wanted to unload my coaches through using technology and, like anything, if it is not really efficient and if the time you’re putting into it versus what you’re getting out of it doesn’t equate then it’s not beneficial.

Learning From World Champions:

The 2014 World Champion Pipeband from St Andrew's College

The 2013 World Champion Pipe band from St Andrew’s College

After arriving at St Andrew’s in 2014, Rod took the time to chat with Mr Richard Hawke who coached the College’s Pipe Band to a World Championship in 2013. He was keen to learn the secret of their sustained success and high performance over the last ten years. He found that they had changed their tuition in two key ways: firstly all tutors now teach the students in exactly the same way and secondly they deliver individual lessons far more than group sessions. Rod took this approach back to the 1st XV Rugby team for this season, comparing coaching to teaching in a classroom:

It’s just like in a class. If I deliver a single message to 22 players then the level of processing and recall can be varied. If I’ve got some key decision makers, I call them the “spine players” such as your #9 and #10 and typically your #8, if we do some real robust 1:1 stuff then their decision making on the field is going to be at a higher level. The best way to do that is to give them the overview of our game plan and then to use video footage to reinforce those concepts.

Summary:

In our conversation, other factors were identified as significant contributors to the success of the team this year, notably a massive pre-season fitness programme. This paid dividends throughout the season as the team won 70% of their games in the second half (judged by either trailing at half time in the score or being only marginally ahead). Critically, Mr McIntosh believes this level of fitness contributed to the almost complete absence of significant injuries to the team during the long season.

Additionally, the team did mental skills with the College counsellor Mr John Quinn which introduced classroom based work around performance preparation, goal setting, positive self talk, setting up routines and being organised. Again, this was an holistic approach designed to help the players in all areas of their schooling, not just their rugby.

Evidently, fitness, mental preparation and video analysis has been a winning combination for St Andrew’s rugby this season with two players selected into the wider National Secondary Schools training squad and seven players in various Canterbury age group teams. The use of video analysis, already common in the College’s hockey team (which placed second in the 2015 Rankin Cup) is being extended into the high performance netball programme as well.

This presents another example of how technology is assisting in improved outcomes at St Andrew’s College, albeit in an environment outside the classroom.

Mentoring Year 4 Students in Mihi Development

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Tom Adams

Throughout the year, all Year 9 classes spend some time being introduced to basic Te Reo and Tikanga concepts through a number of lessons taken by Ms Yoder – the TIC of Maori Studies. One aim of this series of lessons is for the students to develop confidence in introducing themselves, through the delivery of their Mihi. Once developed and practiced, these Mihi are recorded onto their OneNote. They can then be listened back to, to check, and improve on, pronunciation and the flow of the speaking.

A great feature of College life in 2015 has been an increasing amount of collaboration between classes in the secondary school with those in the Preparatory School. This has been blogged about previously in Science here, and digital citizenship here. In order to further foster relationships between the high and prep schools, Mr Dekkers, and the Year 9 teacher Mrs Urmson suggested to the Year 4 teachers, Mrs Munro-Foster and Miss Haisty, that there was the possibility of her group mentoring the Year 4 students to develop their own Mihi.

During this activity pairs of Year 9 students mentored small groups of Year 4 students, and were tasked with helping them to develop their own Mihi – based around the template below.

The template used by Year 4 students to develop their Mihi

The Year 4 students had already spent some time, during Maori language week earlier in the term, developing their Mihi. The role of the Year 9 Mentors was to increase the confidence and fluency of these children. A real strength of this task was the clarity of instructions for all students so that the older students had a clear understanding of their role within this activity and were able to provide feedback that clearly improved the Mihi delivery of the younger students.

Mentor students were given clear instructions that made them more confident in their role

Reflecting on the value of the task, Miss Hastie commented that her Year 4 children enjoyed looking up to children older than them for advice and support.

After a few practice runs, and guidance and feedback from their Leaders, the Year 4 students were ready to record their Mihi. The highlight of the task was undoubtedly the recording phase. Once their Mihi delivery was confident all students were given the opportunity to be recorded in the Preparatory School TV studio. These recordings were then shared with their whanau community through their OneNote ePortfolio.

A Year 4 student recording her Mihi in the Television studio.

Throughout this great collaborative activity Mrs Urmson noticed that her students really rose to the challenge of acting as leaders to younger pupils. The task was a great opportunity for students to practice, and display, important NZ Curriculum Key Competencies such as Managing Self, Relating to Others, and Participating and Contributing.

“It was fun – because the boy knew all the words that I didn’t know!”

Book Week Activity Augments Reality

Posted on August 25, 2015 by Sam McNeill

Entrance to the Preparatory School Library celebrating Book Week 2015

The St Andrew’s College Library Manager, Mrs Cathy Kennedy, runs an annual Book Week for students across the College to engage in. Each year this week includes many competitions and prizes, with at least one activity having a ‘tech focus’ for students. 2015 was no different with the students encouraged to create “Auras” for books that would link to video content or book review trailers through the use of Aurasma Software.

Aimed at our Preparatory School students, the challenge for them was to promote some of their favourite books by creating interactive posters which contained a “trigger” for media content to display over the book cover. To achieve this, a smart phone running the free Aurasma app could be held up in front of the book cover or poster, and then the video content would start to display.

Sound confusing? Here are some screenshots of what it looks like:

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The rectangular content “overlaid” on the book is the augmented reality video clip used by students and displayed via Aurasma

The winning poster submissions and a number of books with Auras waiting to be scanned. Note the Aurasma bookmarks indicating books that have an Aura

Helpfully, Mr Wilj Dekkers had introduced his Year 6 class to using Aurasma earlier in the year, so Mrs Kennedy had some students familiar with the technology. To assist the others, she:

Sparked interest by creating an example Aurasma interactive poster in the library (that linked through to this Animoto Video)
Created a number of instruction sheets around the library
Ran a lunchtime tutorial for those wanting some hands on assistance

With two year group categories for judging the winners, students in Years 4-6 and 7-8, created around 40 Auras which was excellent. A key learning experience for Mrs Kennedy and the students was understanding that students and staff that wanted to see the Auras needed to be following the “standrewslibrary” Aurasma account before scanning an Aura worked correctly. As Mrs Kennedy explained:

Aurasma works a bit like Twitter – just like you need to be following a Twitter user to see see their Tweets, you need to be following an Aurasma user to see their Auras.

With this cleared up, students could happily see what their classmates had created. By using a shared Aurasma account to create the various Aura (to ensure they were collated under one user and therefore easier to find), opportunities for reinforcing good Digital Citizenship practices emerged. Among these were:

Students could not edit/remove the Aura of another student
Students had to still clearly name their Aura so they were identifiable

Pleasingly, the students were very good at the above and this created a positive culture of creating and sharing Auras that promoted a wide range of books.

The back wall of the library was beautifully themed to celebrate book week and contained a poster celebrating the start of Book Week that doubled as an Aura that students could scan:

Reflecting on this activity, Mrs Kennedy noted that the task was actually quite complex and required a fair amount of work and persistence from the students, therefore it was pleasing there were so many submissions. Whilst a paid account with Aurasma is quite expensive, it is something that she would consider in the future since it would open up a wider range of sources to link to, such as website links and YouTube videos (the free account only allows linking to content uploaded to Aurasma).

The winning student posters promoting a book with an Aura are:

The Year 7-8 winner.

The Year 4-6 winner.

Teacher Perspectives On The Surface Pro 3

Posted on August 17, 2015 by Sam McNeill

Six SurfacePro3 for use in classrooms at St Andrew’s College

As we approach the first anniversary of the Surface Pro 3 release in New Zealand, I’ve been reflecting on the fact that we now have 26 staff members using them across the school. An earlier update on how how teachers have been using the Pro 3 in their classes remains one of the more popular posts on this blog and in anticipation of teacher demand for tablets in 2016, I have surveyed those staff members who use a Surface Pro 3.

The overall satisfaction rates of teachers with the Surface Pro 3 is very high

Using SurveyMonkey I have collated some interesting feedback from teachers and share it here for the benefit of other schools that may be interested in exploring the tablets for their teachers.

Whilst it is not always easy to ask the “right” questions when it comes to getting useful feedback I have tried to get staff to compare the key features and functionality of a Surface Pro 3 with a traditional laptop that the College has issued to teaching staff:

An interesting comment to the above responses from a teacher was:

What is not mentioned above is the functionality – the Surface is far more functional than a laptop as it doubles as a tablet, when needed. This is the huge advantage of a Surface over a laptop.

It is important to acknowledge some of those “niggles” that teachers have experienced because no device is perfect. Here is some feedback from staff highlighting some of the challenges of the device:

The keyboard needs to be taken off and reattached to remedy glitches. The keyboard is small and I often hit the caps button. Consider body posture when using the Surface Pro 3 so that you are not hunched. Before putting a plastic box on the desk and under the tablet, I would wonder why I had a sore neck/back/eyestrain.

The thing I really don’t like is a cheapie-feeling keyboard and how I keen hitting two keys at once … lack of USB ports is really annoying too

Some issues with it freezing when in sleep mode. Need to force a restart when this happens

We have done a significant amount of experimentation with wireless projection at St Andrew’s College and a future post will cover what we have settled on, however currently only 41% of our teachers with Surface Pro 3 tablets are using wireless projection (this number is skewed as well because the majority of our SP3 users are in our Preparatory School because of where their lease renewal occurred). However, 96% of the teachers said they would use wireless projection if it was available in their class, with the following breakdown showing how significant it is to their teaching style:

Clearly, the ability to roam a classroom “untethered” from the front and a data projector cable is a big drawcard for teachers and a trend I see only growing as the technology becomes more reliable.

One of the key features of the Surface Pro 3 is the great accuracy of the pen and the ability to “write” into OneNote very easily; a feature that is consistently praised by our teachers. This question specifically asked about the usefulness of the pen:

Some departments at St Andrew’s College would love to change the requirement for students that all devices must support “inking” in some format, and it’s easy to see why: subjects that involve diagrams, formula and equations would be significantly easier for students if they could simply handwrite directly into OneNote.

Whilst the Surface Pro 3 is experiencing favourable feedback from teachers, we are also looking at “convertible laptops” that allow for the handwriting on the screen such as the HP Spectre x360 that folds back into a tablet. Historically, our testing of units like this have been disappointing as the accuracy of the inking on these hybrids just could not compete with genuine tablets like the Pro 3. That said, the attraction of a proper keyboard and a larger screen appeals to some of our teachers:

Ultimately, the value of any device to a teacher can be measured in whether they would recommend it to their colleagues: on this point, the teachers were almost unanimous.

One interesting comment from a teacher in the Preparatory School reflects the uptake of tablets in their class by students, purely based on what they have seen from teachers using the devices:

A number of staff in the Prep School who opted for laptops now regret their choice and given the opportunity would switch to a surface. 8 students in my class now use surface tablets – 2 having switched from Mac.

How has the practice of our teachers changed with the Surface Pro 3?

This is a difficult question to get answers to in some ways but a critical one to understand what, if any, impact on pedagogy a technology shift has had for our teachers. Up until the introduction of the Surface Pro 3 the teachers at St Andrew’s were all given identical laptops. By introducing some limited choice it has increased the support costs of maintenance and spares, therefore it was hoped there would be some positive changes or improvements in teaching practice. Here is a selection of some replies from teachers:

My practice has not changed, but the mobility of the Surface and the fact that will do all I ask of it has adapted my style. I am able to work with the students annotating a piece of writing or work through maths problems using the stylus and each child is able to revisit this learning through OneNote. The mobility, wireless projector connectivity and stylus allow me to get away from the desk and be with the students when teaching. Most importantly – the students use of the Surface to share with others is powerful. They take my surface and use it to explain concepts to a group when linked to the projector and when used in conjunction with OneNote, students collaborate in real time on a piece of learning using their stylus on their own Surface tablets.

Maths Teacher

A reply from a Preparatory School teacher suggests it can lead to MORE work:

I probably end up doing more work from home as it is much more portable [than a laptop]

Preparatory School Teacher

It has not changed my practice, but has complemented it very well. I already used my own Surface in conjunction with a school laptop. Before the Surface, I used my phone to do many of the same functions, complemented by a laptop. Having a Surface provided by school has meant operating fewer devices for the same outcomes, making it easier when you don’t have your own classroom.

Science Teacher

More movement around the class, use of pen and writing has enhanced the annotation ability, marking and so forth, integration of technology, ease of OneNote and working 1 on 1 with students. light, easy to move around with especially when wirelessly not connected to data projector

English Teacher

I don’t write on whiteboard anymore – I write directly onto my OneNote page so students can access this

Science Teacher

Much easier to use in PE settings ie with pen and tablet. Therefore I am more likely to use it, and complete observation style tasks more frequently. Easier to mark / use OneNote – I can mark and make comments quickly using the pen

PE Teacher

Less time at my desk and more time with students. Ability to take teaching outside the classroom, faster and with more resources. Being able to show examples of preferred practices with ease and ability to document past/current teaching and interactions with the students has been key. Students are assisted by this to become more reflective learners. (ability to revisit work via OneNote).

Preparatory School Teacher

A recurring theme comes through in these responses in terms of how a tablet, with the ability to ink, enhances the value of Microsoft OneNote, a key tool that is being used at our College.

The above information is important for the ICT team to understand. Like many schools, we lease our teacher laptops/devices and renew these every three years. The teaching staff leases are split into three, so each year we replace 1/3 of the devices (around 45-50), and I anticipate that the majority of our teachers who are up for a new device in 2016 will want something they can write on. The above information will be disseminated to those teachers to help them make informed decisions and also assist the ICT department in providing the best support possible.

Guest Post: Arduino Adventures

Posted on August 3, 2015 by Sam McNeill

This is a guest post written by three Year 8 students from the Preparatory School: Imogen, Archie and Marshall.

Last week, twenty students from Year 8 were part of an Arduino day run by FutureInTech. Arduinos are open source microcontrollers that can be programmed to do various things. The fact that they are open source means that anyone can use the software and hardware for whatever they want, as long as they follow the license.

There were five tutors from Airways, Dynamic Controls, Allied Telesis and Meridian Energy: a computer scientist between four, working in pairs. We took turns programming and plugging into the microcontroller. Our first project was to make a LED flash. From that, we progressed to making the LED flash at different speeds, using a button to make the LED flash, and connecting a buzzer. In the end, some of us had managed to make a doorbell: when you pressed a button, a LED would light up, the buzzer would go, and on the screen would appear “Someone’s at the door!”

Overall, we had plenty of fun on the day and learnt some new skills. We would definitely like to do something like it again if we had the chance.

Preparatory School Racing Ahead with Robotics

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Tom Adams

During Term One and Two this year Miss Bryony Marks, among a number of other projects, initiated a Robotics club at Year 5 in the Preparatory School. Initially the club was open to 15 students, using Lego Mindstorm EV3 to build and program in groups of 3. The purpose of the club was to introduce Year 5 students to Robotics, thus setting the groundwork for future expansion of robotics as these students progress through the college.

In response to overwhelming demand and interest form other year groups, it was immediately obvious that an expansion of resources was needed. The extremely supportive College PTA was approached for support in this area, and generously responded with $5000 funding for a further 8 sets – allowing whole class robotics for the first time. This now allows all children in the Preparatory school the opportunity to engage with this exciting technology, and to authentically apply their basic block programming skills to robotics.

The next logical progression in this rapidly evolving programme was to enter teams in the Canterbury Regional 2015 RoboCup Junior competition. This national competition requires students to use their programming, engineering, and creative skills to entertain, delight, and thrill an audience. They must design up to three robots that are used in a 1 to 2 minute themed performance based around either robot theatre, or rescue. At Year 5 and Year 7, all interested children were given the opportunity to ‘trial’ for these competition teams, with Miss Marks looking for children with a range of skills such as organisation, programing, robot building and creativity.

The two Year 5 teams were chosen after a ‘Loop Walk’ challenge which required them to self-teach and apply their new knowledge in small groups to program a robot to walk a square course in the style of their choosing.

Year 7 teams were chosen through a Little Red Riding Hood Challenge, which required them to program a Robot to navigate from Grandma’s house to Red Riding Hood’s garage, while stopping to look for cars. and then reversing into their garage.

The final team is a two person Year 8 team that was selected based on previous experience. James has an interest and experience in programming, while Ethan has a passion for Robotics.

On Friday all five teams spent the day preparing for the competition. Over the course of the day they conceptualised, built and programmed their robots. The room was a busy hive of activity throughout the day, as student groups worked independently on the numerous challenges involved in such a task.

James and Ethan are entered in the Research and Rescue Challenge which requires their robot to follow a black line across the performance area, sensing and responding to green squares. Finally, it must grab a tin can from the center of the area, eventually returning it to the beginning of the course. James noted that his biggest challenge of the day was applying his previous block programming experience through Scratch into the new platform; EV3 Mindstorm. Ethan’s main challenge was trouble-shooting the challenges that the colour senses proved, as they initially struggled to perform as expected.

Ethan and James’ robot

It is challenges like this that prove the relevance and importance of robotics. Miss Marks noted that “Children are required to self-manage, problem solve and think logically as they respond to various challenges throughout the build. Competitive Robotics combines creative writing, engineering, arts and crafts, DIY, coding and programming – everything that our students love!”

Click below to see a short video of an early prototype from the day! We wish all St Andrew’s College Teams well as they continue to prepare for the regional competition on August 16th!

Office 2016 Arrives for Mac Users

Posted on July 12, 2015 by Sam McNeill

St Andrew’s College is an Office365 school, making extensive use of the Microsoft OneNote application in particular and we are also compulsory BYOD from Year 9 (we still allow choice of Windows / Apple). Over the last two years we have seen increasing amounts of Apple laptops coming to school with the students and one of the frustrations has been the old Office 2011 available for Macs.

This has changed with Microsoft’s release of Office 2016 for Mac last week, announced on their blog here (see below for the release video) and for the first time it also includes OneNote (for a long time unavailable and then only released via the Mac App Store).

It is strongly encouraged that students remove Office 2011 before attempting the install of the new version – detailed instructions are available here to do this. A video showing the complete installation process of Office 2016 for Mac can be seen here:

The new Office 2016 is distinctively “Mac” in design and brings the feature set much closer to the Windows 2013 version (although, frustratingly, some of the best features of OneNote are not there still). Here’s hoping that updates will improve this so that both Windows and Apple users have comparable functionality.

Another feature that appears to be missing from the new Office 2016 Powerpoint is Office Mix – a fantastic plugin that allows teachers and students to easily record narrated screencasts.

Overall, it’s a big step forward for Mac users and one that I am confident many of our students will download to their BYOD devices since it remains free for our students at St Andrew’s College

Promotional Video for Office 2016 for Mac:

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