My YouTube edit is complete! You can find the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whpTfk8af5M
Teacher Interviews on FreshGrade
- FreshGrade creates a window into the classroom, letting parents be part of the learning even when they are not there
- Great as she can take photos in the classroom and upload to FreshGrade immediately
- You can take photos of a range of events such as a trip to the library or to a local tree outside to keep the parents in the loop
- Parents are updated in the moment, that day or that week, instead of 3 times a year in a report card
- Parents are informed of struggling students and can support the student before it’s too late
- Parent engagement increases as the are notified every time there is a post and they can make comments on the posts
- During parent teacher interviews parents always say how much they love the updates and communication even if they are not commenting on the posts
- NOTE: glitches in the program… it may look like the parents haven’t looked at the post, but they have, it may not reflect what is actually being viewed
- Convenient – you can communicate to parents when convenient – waiting at gymnastics, at bedtime, don’t have to photocopy and stuff into 20 backpacks and you have guaranteed delivery where you don’t have to worry if it gets lost
- Video is a power for tool for showing the learning process – You can record oral language in French and English BUT can be difficult because of background noise in the classroom – Idea from student teacher is to get a microphone attached to the iPad to get rid of background noise
- Success depends on teachers comfort with technologies
- Nature walks – use an iPhone – take photos from the back of students as there is a concern with privacy with photos taken on your phone versus the approved iPads in the classroom
- It can take a long time to make meaningful posts for every student, make your posts intentional and specific as parents don’t need a ton of photos – choose quality over quantity
- Negative aspect of FreshGrade;Â
- You can’t tag stories or subjects
- You can colour code, but the images aren’t joined together so it is not easy to see how different images are connected together
- If parents aren’t looking all the time, they won’t see the connections in learning
What parents have to say…
- It is a wonderful way to see what kids are up to at school – window into the classroom
- A way to experience the learning without actually being there and keep up on announcements
- Sparks conversation at home with video and photos
- Really depends on the teacher and how they use it
- Worry: kids are going to start to always expect a picture, or to feel they need to smile or look up from work and that it may change the feeling of learning in some way
Thank you Michael for a teaching us all about technology! So sad today is the last class!
Check out the video our class made here:
https://alicia.opened.ca/2019/11/29/thank-you-michael-from-edci-336-a03/
Here is the slide presentation from today: Â FreshGrade Presentation
FreshGrade – an amazing tool for communication between teacher, parents and students!
Be prepared to use FreshGrade Next in the next year…
Here are some tips when using FreshGrade:
- Find another teacher who is using it and learn about it together
- First starting out just use as a communication tool and for announcements
- Report on one subject to start with
- A way to save time is to upload a photo that can be sent to everyone at once as a group to explain the activity, then upload meaningful individual photos and comments of each student for individual learning
- Try and group students together during an activity and you can tag the students so that all those students/parents see that post- saves time
- Make meaningful posts, be intentional with posts, don’t just use it like an Instagram account
- Too many images makes it less meaningful
- Note* parents cannot respond to announcements
- Educate parents!! Don’t just assume they know or understand how to use FreshGrade
- Explain and encourage parents to comment on posts
- Explain how comments are only seen by student, teacher and the parents of that child
- Explain how parents cannot share the photos posted on FreshGrade outside of FreshGrade as there are privacy concerns
- Might get a notification, but due to glitches in the FreshGrade, the post won’t show up immediately
- Best to use iPad supplied in the school as there are concerns about having student photos on your personal phone
- Share as a highlight and it goes to parents email so that they get notified
- Eyeball mean’s it’s been sent
- Arrow with an envelope means it hasn’t not be sent
- Add a quick note and then you can just reuse that note for other posts
- If your school district supports FreshGrade, email FreshGrade with any concerns with your school district email and you will skip the que and go straight to the top of their list!
Technology keeps surprising me all the time! Who knew that it was so easy to incorporate augmented reality into the classroom to expand on learning. I love the idea of connecting children’s artwork to a video of the student talking about what the artwork is about for parents to view during an open house or parent teacher conference. I can’t believe you can scan a toy and put it into a program that makes it look like it is walking!
https://www.livescience.com/34843-augmented-reality.html
I was also blown away by the virtual Reality room in the library. I got to watch Alicia explore google earth, Sam go on a roller coaster and to Mitra paint and create clay 3D objects. By the time it was my turn I was already feeling nausea from watching the screen so I took a pass today, but I can’t wait to go back another day!  The options are endless!
Josh and the Penguin
Josh was freezing cold as he looked out at the horizon with the sunset glimmering off the hard frozen snow. His breath made icicles that hung off his scarf and jacket. He could hardly feel his fingers through his thick gloves. His walk was stiff and awkward with the many layers of clothes he had to wear to prevent frostbite. His stomach was rumbling and his mind began to dream about warming up the corn chowder he had brought to school to eat. His assignment was to research and document how many emperor penguins were left in Antarctica.  There used to be almost 600,000 emperor penguins in 2020. Now in 2040, Josh could only find 1,245.  As the sun went down below the horizon Josh clicked the red button on the back of his glove and immediately he was back in the classroom.
A loud sound of gushing wind was interrupted by the click of a glass door as it opened into a warm sunny room in Victoria in British Columbia. Josh tumbled out of the glass cylinder and into the classroom peeling off his winter gear as fast as he could.
“Oh boy, am I ever hungry!” Josh exclaimed as he hung up his gear. He went through his backpack and found his chowder to warm up for his lunch. Josh was only thirteen. He was the youngest of his classmates. He had been interested in penguins ever since he could remember.  His inquiry had begun when he was three years old, watching a video on how male emperor penguins look after their eggs while the females leave to get food.
“How many did you find today Josh?” asked his friend Jack.
“Well, numbers have finally gone up about 100 from last year,” replied Josh with a tone of hopefulness. Josh’s goal was to help the penguins reach a population of 3000 by 2051.
Up to 2035, global warming had had devastating effects on the earth and scientists have been recruiting schools to help document the dwindling populations of the world.  Now that teleporting was possible, global warming was at a standstill as there was a major decrease in the amount of carbon being produced as transportation had changed so drastically. In the last year, Josh and his school mates were just starting to see a slight improvement in the animal populations.
Josh turned to Jack and said, “You know my Dad was telling me the other day how excited he was as a kid at my age, where you could view photos and satellite imagery from in the world with Google earth. Now, we can actually go anywhere we want and we are not limited by that old technology! I can’t imagine being stuck behind a computer to view the world, when you can actually go anywhere you want through the new teleporting systems developed by Cindercat.”
“Yeh, Cindercat transporting has changed the world for the better for sure,” said Jack, “I love being able to go to Africa to count the giraffes. It is way better than in the olden days when you just learned about giraffes in a book or on the computer!”
Josh flipped open his tablet and starting writing down a few notes about his morning adventures in Antarctica.  Quietly, he put his hand into his pocket to see if the baby penguin was still there. He knew he wasn’t allowed to take any penguins home, but he also knew that this one would die without his help.
By Jessica Milne
Today we had fun trying out several different coding applications and programs to engage students in coding. Hannah and I tried out Glitch which was super interesting, but I am really glad Hannah already know a little bit about coding which made it much easier to understand. The options are endless, but important to know about as we enter the world of teaching.
Why is coding useful in education? Coding gets students engaged and promotes critical thinking while building computational skills. Ways to incorporate coding can include: codebc.ca which links coding applications to the BC curriculum; cartooning; Minecraft, Scratch, CodeMonkey, and Glitch.
Here are the slides from Michael today: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fodrvtJIwYYJ2Oipmp2hP712GKvjSeG50e1dotZzNzk/edit#slide=id.p
Links to check out:
https://www.cbc.ca/parents/learning/view/why-kids-should-learn-to-code-and-how-to-get-them-started
Simple story
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/344047068/
Flappy bird game
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/17341536/
Choose your Own Adventure
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/2007269/Â
Piano
https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/10012676/Â
Glitch
Twine
Collection of free teaching material to teach Computer Science through engaging games and puzzles that use cards, string, crayons and lots of running around https://csunplugged.org/en/
I loved seeing how this presentation incorporated their own video into their demonstration! Way to go John for showing your video on the running man! Digital literacy is definitely improved by using video.
Here is an interesting link of videos teachers use in education: https://www.youtube.com/user/teachers/playlists Â
Just make sure to watch the videos first to make sure that they are appropriate and that there isn’t anything freaky in the video somewhere.
Good tip to remember: Use “start at time”
Here are some key points from today:
How can videos be used?
- Can replace written text to keep subjects diverse and exciting
- Show a video and then ask students to think critically about it
- Students can make videos (video journaling, creative films, how to videos)
Some ideas to use digital literacy for teaching:
- Big questions
- Multiple viewings
- Keep it short
- Break it up
- Use a 3rd party tools like edpuzzle, https://edpuzzle.com/Flipgrid https://info.flipgrid.com/
Video as a tool for Assessment
- Pedagogical Narration
- How-to Videos (could use Flipgrid)
- Digital Portfolios – using google sites for self-assessment like Sheri Gurney uses
Cautions
- Watch the whole video first before you show the video to make sure it’s what you are looking for and that it doesn’t have something freaky in it in the end
- Have purpose
- Equipment dependant
- Don’t just play whole video
- Make sure they are engaged
- Tip: Use “start at time”
Wow, this presentation makes me want to make my own digital story! Thanks Fran for your beautiful inspiring video on her dog, not to mention your beautiful piano playing!
Here are my notes from the presentation…
- Supports personal discovery and emotional self-examination
- Telling a story with technology, with photos, pictures or video, text
- write the text, highlight sections
- recording voices
- Multimodal literacy that enables students to create a deeper understanding and emotional connection with their audience through narration, music and images
- 7 Elements of Digital Storytelling
- Point of view
- Dramatic Question
- Emotional Content
- Voice – recording the voice narration to help meaning of visual content – students need practice with this
- Soundtrack
- Economy – picture tells a thousand words
- Pacing
- Pros
- Extremely multimodal
- Student voice and engagement
- Digital literacy
- Gives time to reviewed
- Consider
- Time consuming
- Demoralizing if students don’t have the same access
- Classroom must by psychologically safe
- Risks
- Technology could fail you and be frustrating
Examples: Google Slides, Imovie, Comic Life, Imagine Forest, Speech Journal
Tips:
- Use storyboards
- Set clear criteria
- Scaffold
- Allow personal creativity and inquiry
How can digital storytelling be used for students: All subjects!!
- English language arts; book trailer, personal narrative…
How can digital storytelling be used to help teachers?
- Flipped lessons
- Reinforce subject matter
- Present new information in a fun, accessible way
- Promote increased participation from sick and absent students
- Multimodal, comprehensive, way to assess students’ takeaways
Resources:
- Michael’s blog
- SetBC – module#3
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