Using Laptop Wraps in PDHPE

TaLe has created an excellent resource called Laptop Wraps. Basically they are self-contained interactive lessons, which I think are perfectly suited to PDHPE theory lessons and  the vehicle that is the DER laptops our kids now have.

Last week I tied to run a lesson from our Moodle site. The kids had to use some separate resources to create something new. It was probably a reflection of my primitive Moodle awareness, but the kids had trouble bring all the resources together for the job. The beauty of the Laptop Wrap is that the kids can download the zipped file to their laptop, open it and away they go. Internet access is required for links, but all other resources are on the “C” drive, ready to use.

(As an aside, I can see the Wrap becoming a tool that students can create resources with – they won’t just be the target of the resource, but partners in its use – exciting times. Students become teachers – who would have thought it?)

To start, you need the Adobe suite of software to edit and modify the blank template, in particular Dreamweaver and to a lesser degree Fireworks. I have them on my DER laptop, but I’m having issues with the screen and keyboard (they are too bloody small!), so I work on my desktop at home with the Adobe Master Collection I bought through the DET. (A KVM switch will take care of the small screen issue soon)

You can download a template from here. I won’t bore you with a step by step on how to build one. There’s plenty of tutorial information in the template itself, along with support on the TaLe site itself. Take the time to walk through the “How To’s”. There are some useful PDFs in there as well that make great training manuals.

Instead I’m sharing an example that my faculty will use with this years Year 10. Get it from here

I started off thinking that entire units could be handled by the Wraps, which is likely but probably a giant step too far at the moment. I went for the “small chunks” approach, and we will create “topic Wraps”, with smaller amounts of content. Too much information too soon seems likely to run the risk of burning the kids out before they get the hang of it and appreciate the potential of the Wraps.

Feel free to download the file open it up and have a play (probably only of interest to PDHPE teachers).It is my first real crack at putting one together, so Quality Teaching may not be at dizzying heights just yet, but continual improvement is our goal.

Post Script – sharing this Wrap created quite a bit of discussion regarding copyright, and who actually owns the product. Debate raged as to whether it was a DET/Federal Govt/ personal ownership issue. I’ve slapped a Creative Commons note on my blog and on the Copyright notice in the Wrap itself as a way to manage this gray area.

Dear Julia, How was your week?

Dear Julia,

How was your week?

My year started off pretty well. The vacations finished with me feeling excited, but a little nervous about the year coming up. Excited because I love teaching, nervous because the way I do stuff is going through a bit of a revolution (oops – sorry..you already know about that : ) )

The Staff Development Day went well – the usual mandatory stuff – School Certificate results, HSC results, the great news about the ATAR scores some of our kids got and where they’ll be next year (Mate!! Johnny C was accepted into Teaching…who would have thought he’d pick that…maybe it was one of us that changed his mind..we’ll never know unless we ask him I guess, because there’s no data on those sorts of events)  and growth and decline data (the sort of stuff we see every year and put plans into place for). I even did the mandatory drug thing, put a funny video about spiders on drugs in (made everybody laugh, but they knew what it was about).

Then the kids came in the next few days. The big ones and little ones first, then everyone else. There was this quiet excitement around the joint – it was the right way to start.

HEY..one question.. what was the idea behind the big surprise – MySchool? I mean I sort of knew it was coming, but not Term 1 Week 1 when my mind was on getting set for the year…OHH!…I get it..it was some sort of a cunning plan to get us thinking, like the cunning plans that fella Baldrick has. I’ll have to call you Baldrick from now on (LOL), and I guess that makes Kev our Blackadder (is that good or bad ..haha)

I’ll give you one thing though, MySchool certainly got us talking. Everyone was a bit quiet at school when we saw the website, but I guess we’ll just take it in our stride and use it the way it was meant to be used. I’m starting a list of the questions I’ve got for you on what we are supposed to make of our school information (I’ll get that to you soon), but one interesting thing I noticed was that the local Grammar school (who charge a bit for fees I’ve heard) actually had a  socio economic score  on par with us. That must explain why their Federal funding is higher than others (?)

Yeah, like I said MySchool certainly got us talking. I follow a few educators on Twitter (I guess most of them would consider themselves the more intellectual and engaged members in the job) and even they couldn’t come to any consensus on what MySchool was going to mean. One of them even used it as a way of comparing a school where their kids went, and with a school that performed well (as reported in the papers as being “the sixth best primary school in the state”). That’s a ranking system isn’t it..oh hang on..we’re not meant to do that are we? I guess if teachers do it then it’s going to be hard for parents, politicians, the papers, the tele, and all the school promotion teams not to do it too? Oh well, we’ll just take that in our stride and use it the way it was meant to be used.

I’ve got to admit, I’ve thought about little else this week, which is saying something considering I’ve got the whole year ahead of me. I’ve got to lock in my Outdoor Recreation excursions program, where I provide the kids with experiences that build (I hope) self management, self confidence, cooperation, communication, resilience and empathy (to name a few). Unfortunately there’s no way of telling if these things will influence our MySchool scores, and I feel a bit guilty about taking the Year 9’s away from school when they could be practising their exam skills. I feel sorry for the poor Maths and English teachers actually, because I’ve got a feeling they are going to cop it from parents when we start talking about improving literacy and numeracy. You said it yourself, about how if there was a problem with Maths go and see the Principal about how Maths is done at the school. I try to help with programmed literacy and numeracy in PDHPE, but our parents probably wouldn’t know that.

Hey, that brings me to my idea. You know how on the school information page in MySchool you’ve put all those coloured boxes (pink means bad, green means good…well that’s what one of our parents told me anyway)? Why don’t you give the majority of this years Federal funding to the schools that got pink boxes? The green box schools are doing OK obviously, and the pinkies need the help. Maybe that’s too simple…I don’t know…just a thought.

Anyway, you look after yourself – I know you’ve got an election coming up soon….oh, I get it.. MySchool is another part of your cunning plan. Good old Baldrick! (HaHa)

Anyway, look for that list in the mail.

Cheers,

Jonesy

All aboard the 2010 express

With school resuming in under a week, I’m going to go against all the advice you hear from the experts and make some resolutions and predictions for the coming year. Some will be goals based on dreams that I have for my own satisfaction, others will be the result of expectations from above (specifically my Principal (is there anyone higher?).

But first, it’s always good to see where you’ve come from, in order to see where you can go to.

Starting at the end

Permit me a short reflection on 2009. As a self confessed tech fan, even I was happy when the formal school year ended and I got a break from the technology tsunami that hit. I found the introduction of the DERvices and all it’s associated  PD sessions disorienting at times. I was excited on one hand, nervous at the implications, frustrated at the process and exhausted by the possibilities. I read too much, saved too many bookmarks and tags on Delicious (just in case they come in use), Twittered away to all hours and even started a blog (the last bastion of self aggrandisers, I used to think).

The student reaction to the DERvices was, to be honest, not what I’d imagined. Instead of walking together into a golden age of learning possibilities, I was somewhat saddened to hear complaints about what the laptops couldn’t do, rather than overwhelming excitement about the possibilities to come. A generational quirk…who knows?

My year ended a bit of a jumbled mess.

Striding confidently into the future

I wrote a list (using a pen and paper) of the things I wanted to have a crack at in 2010. Here they are (in no particular order):

• Moodle – I have a period allowance to develop a Moodle users group at school, for my staff and for (I suspect) our partner schools as well. I intend to become a power Moodler.
• Use technology in an authentic way to deliver aspects of the PE  curriculum- pedometers and then graphing with Google docs, Outdoor Recreation and GPS receivers, Web 2.0 tools like Glogster, Voicethread and a shared online space, TaLE laptop wraps to create rich tasks, ePortfolios to present work and to display at Parent Teacher nights, video and audio to enhance skill acquisition. I resolve to immerse my staff in the world on Web2.0
• Create authentic assessment tasks that reflect the use of PE skills and knowledge in the real world. My faculty assessment tasks will be relevant,engaging and authentic.
• Use mobile phones in class. My resolution is self explanatory
• Use SMS polling in class. Ditto
• Go paperless in as much as I, and the “system”, can allow. I resolve to reduce the number of binders on my desk
• I’d like to stick using Wii in there as well, but that might be biting off just a little too much.

My year has started as a bit of a jumbled mess.

Some of these are taken as givens – for instance, my work with Moodle. Clear cut, working toward concrete goals. And I think I’ve got a good handle on the paperless concept. I think I’ll employ the “seeking forgiveness is easier than seeking permission” strategy here. These two projects share a common theme – I will be able to run my own race, march to my own drum, draw up my own game plays.

Some will be personal projects that require opportunity and time to prepare the students to become skilled in their use. I don’t want to drown myself in half completed projects though. Time to be selective…hmmmmm.

The others are faculty projects and involve those slippery and somewhat precarious notions of collaboration and collegiality. Shared vision, delegation, acceptable standards of work, risk taking and promoting personal growth in “experienced” staff….these will be my mantra.

Ideally, the rest of my blogging in 2010 will be joyous accounts of the journey for each/most/some of these projects – our successes, the back slapping camaraderie, the light bulb popping moments that signify advances in both our professional and personal growth.

I still can’t help but feel a bit nervous.

Going paperless

One of my dreams, right from the start of my journey with technology, is that one day I could eliminate paper entirely from my job. Pipedream….perhaps, and up to now I’d never quite cracked a method that would allow the dream to become reality.

Recently, I was helping out at a Moodle workshop and I was shown a method that may head me closer toward the paperless classroom. It includes using Moodle, a photocopier that can scan documents into PDF format, and Microsoft OneNote. It’s funny how all these conditions suddenly coalesced one day, not only in my thinking, but also in reality.

One of the biggest spends at my school is the printing of coursework booklets for students. Just about every faculty prints booklets that contain “learning” activities. I could spend a whole blog post discussing the merits (or otherwise) of these booklets, but that’s for another day. A guestimate from my boss was that we spend $20K+ on printing costs each year! Imagine what you could spend that sort of cash on, rather than on “one use” booklets that inevitably get tossed away at the end of each semester.

So what if we could make the use of these booklets electronic in nature? The obvious question was how do you make the electronic version editable to the extent that students could submit work, without having to print out pages, write on them and hand them in? That would just defeat the purpose of trying to go paperless.

So, in a wonderful combination of serendipity and old fashioned professional networking I have a potentially workable solution to play with. I have to thank Pam from Newcastle High for her insights in showing it to me.

Firstly, my target group. In my case, the participants will by our Year 10 (2010) students, who will have their DERvices (netbooks) and will hopefully, by then, will be skilled in the use of them. These netbooks have Adobe PDF readers and creators and OneNote preinstalled, making the whole process possible.

OK..here’s how it works.

Take your paper version of your booklet. Stick it through your photocopier, so it produces a complete PDF copy (in my case 40 pages). Upload the PDF booklet to your Moodle course, and make it available as a resource file. At the same time, create an “Upload one file” assignment activity that is named after the worksheet, or whatever, and put it in the same area as the booklet PDF.

Now, in class, when you want to use a resource or activity that is in the booklet, the kids can open the PDF booklet to the required page. Select the page for printing, but instead of printing it to paper, in the print dialogue window, select “Print to OneNote”. The page selected will now appear in a OneNote notebook. For those that know OneNote well, you know you can click and type anywhere on the page. In this case, the kids can click and type anywhere on the selected page imported from the PDF booklet. The kids can now do their work on the page, and when they finish, save it as a PDF file on their PC.

They head to Moodle, and upload their work as a PDF to the assignment activity. The teacher can open the file, grade the work and feedback to the kids….without touching one piece of paper! Samples of student work can be collected and presented electronically as an ePortfolio, without carting folders, books or paper to your Head Teacher or Principal.

Sure there will probably be limitations that don’t suit everyone’s workplace, but I my humble opinion, it’s a right step in an exciting direction.

Moodle, Glogster and Runkeeper

This week I’ve played with a few things that might come in handy as far as student engagement goes in the next few months.
As the roll out date for our DER laptops draws nearer (11 days and counting), I tried some things that I can lead my faculty through as simple but quality engagement resources.
Glogster is something I’d heard about in many professional learning (PL) sessions, but never really explored. Setting up an education account with enough room (200 friends) for present and future students, I launched into my first Glog. Using this as a bench mark, I started my Year 10 Outdoor Recreation class on a PIP (Personal Interest Project), using Glogster as the medium for producing their work. They genuinely seemed interested and engaged in the set task. We’ll see how it goes in the future weeks!
Thanks to MrRobbo, I’ve started playing with Run Keeper, an iPhone app that records an exercise session, then uploads it to you online account. Whilst the opportunity for kids to contribute will initially be low (not many, if any, have iPhones), I can definitely see the use for the final product that I produce to be used as a stimulus for analysis. Who knows, kids might get iPhones for Christmas and then the whole landscape will change.
On a more egocentric note, apparently my work with our Moodle team at school has resulted in me being given the opportunity to share my experience at a Regional level in the next few weeks. I’m a bit excited about that – because it is a chance for me to be granted the respect I’ve so waited so long for (LOL). No – I am genuinely excited because I can’t really remember the last time I’ve been asked to contribute my knowledge on a work related issue that will help others with something that I have a genuine passion for. I’m pretty jazzed about that!

Video of the week – one of my favourite songs at the moment.

Treasure hunt with mobiles (part2)

As promised, here is the finished product. The photos were taken by members of the class, and the map drawn by one of the students as well. The creation of the resource  added an extra dimension to an otherwise run of the mill orienteering exercise.Year 9 OR treasure hunt

Mobile phones and Outdoor Recreation

I tried a little experiment with my Year 9 Outdoor Recreation class last week. We are doing a unit on Navigation using maps and compasses initially, and then handheld GPS units. First of all though I wanted them to be able to translate a birds eye view of the school into a hand drawn map, and then use that map to find locations around the school as a part of a treasure hunt for puzzle clues. Find the locations, find the clues, solve the puzzle.
Rather than have me go around and choose spots on the map where I was going to leave the puzzle clues, or mark the spots as waypoints on the GPS, I thought “why not let the kids pick the spots”. Easy enough, but then training the kids to use the GPS efficiently would take time (that I didn’t have), and the chances of getting accurate written descriptions of the locations were not great.
So then it came to me…the majority of the kids had phones with cameras, and the ability to Bluetooth an image to my DERvice. I would get them to photograph something identifiable around the school, and then we would use the visual clues to find the puzzle elements that would be left at the site of the image.
I don’t know why, but the students were initially wary about using their phones for this, but all came back with some “interesting” images. Some needed to be reshot, because they proved to be too obscure, but most were useable. Some kids asked for some more time to pick and shoot their image. Volunteering for homework – whatever next!!

Next lesson the images, inserted on the best hand drawn map of the school, will form the “treasure map” for the kids treasure hunt.  I’ll have the worksheet to show here after the lesson.

Now, rather than give out the worksheet on paper, my dream would be to distribute via Bluetooth to phones so the kids could carry it with them! Is this possible? I’ll be trying to find out!

Liven up your Moodle Front Page

Rather than having a plain list of courses or categories, why not try to liven up your Moodle front page by having clickable icons that link you to your courses?

Once you know how, its pretty easy.

Go to the Site Admin menu, click on Front Page and then Front Page settings. Find the check box for “Include a topic section” and check it. Save your changes and then go to your front page. Turn editing on, and you’ll see the edit icon at the top of the page, which allows you to creat a topic label, just like on a course page. Click the edit icon, and you’ll see your regular editing options. From the tool bar, find the Table button and create a table. This is where you can insert text and images in a table. Insert your images (they have to be uploaded to your Moodle site first) into one row of the table, and in a row underneath I’d suggest you type in a label for each image. Now you need to link the image to the course page using the hyperlink button. I’d suggest you copy and paste each course address to a Word document, and then cut and paste into the hyperlink box when prompted. Once you have your links working, center your pictures and text labels so they look neater, and there you go! Have a look at my school front page (http://www.hccweb2.org/erina/) as an example.

eLearning with eXe

I was researching SCORM modules for Moodle (ie. what are they? How do you use them? How do you create them?) when I came across eXe. This free source program allows you to make simple eLearning modules that can then be uploaded to something like Moodle. Have a look – download is about 25Mb, and it comes with tutorials.

Moodle questions and answers

The great thing about my PLN (Personal Learning Network) on Twitter is that I not only find out lots of things, but I also get to answer questions for other people, which also increases my own knowledge by having to find an answer.

One person from my PLN asked if I knew how to make course creation on Moodle easier. Being a course creator on a Moodle site means you can (obviously) create new courses, but for whatever reason Moodle has made the process tricky. To create a new course, the creator has to follow a less defined path through their already created courses to find a button that says “Create new course”

Are you still following?

So they asked “How can I make it so that the course creator can find the “Create a new course” button more easily?”

I did some research in the Moodle forums, and discovered how to do it!

Moodle is arranged in hierachical fashion. Categories are ways to help people find courses more easily. The default setting for categories in Moodle is Miscellaneous. What most people seem to do is create their courses inside this category. When the course creation permission is given to people, the problem I mentioned before occurs (ie. the difficulty in finding the course creation button)
One solution is to create new categories. In a school categories may be things like “Maths”, “English”, “Science” and other subject areas. Then, give the course creators permissions for the categories (not the courses). When these people then log in, and go to the category that they work in, they will see the “Create new course” button at the bottom of the category page. Simple!
They only issue I found was they are allowed to create and work on courses in all categories, but as these people would most likely be trusted and reliable people, you could assume they would probably only work in their intended category anyway. Who knows, it may produce cross curricular collaboration!
If, like me, you already created courses under Miscellaneous, you can still go ahead and create your new categories, and then move your existing courses into them without any problems. Just go through the “Add/Edit courses” menu on the Site Administration area, then look for Categories. Click on Miscellaneous and you’ll see all your courses. Look for the “Move selected courses” menu box. Select the courses that need to be moved, and then select their new destination.

Video of the week – very clever, and a great song