You Gotta Know!

Moving on from an earlier post that I had about e-portfolios and the changes needing to happen to upskill parents in the uses of tech in our classrooms. Last week myself and another teacher began our journey of working with students and parents outside school hours to develop the e-learning knowledge of our parents. This is a reflection on the process and consultation with our parents to make this happen...

First Steps
Our first ideas were to send home an information sheet explaining what we were hoping to do and also a chance to gauge where our parents saw themselves on the scale of ICT competence. We looked at knowledge ranging from google searching to blogs to educational tools like wordle. The last thing we wanted to know about were days and times that best suited our families. The response we got to the surveys was average with around half of both classes returning the notices.

From here the information we recieved it allowed us to move on and plan for the first sessions topics to happen on a day and time/s that suited our families. We found there was a clear split of families wanting to come straight after school and then again straight after work. So to allow for this we set up 2 sessions: 3.30-4.30 and then again 5-6pm. For each family we also emphasised that the students were to come to the sessions as we want them to be able to share and pass on the knowledge and skills they have. They are a key element in the sessions working successfully too. So the students sat with their parents and supported them throughout the session.

We sent out final forms again to notify the parents of the date/time and topics and we received 10 parents across the 2 classes who were keen to come - with another 2 who wanted to but were unavailable that night. We knew the numbers would be lower for the first ones and are relying on word of mouth to begin the upward trend to more parents.

We have called the sessions 'You Gotta Know To Understand'. A nice NZ musical reference there for those of you that know!

Beginning Topics
Our beginning topics were Google Searching and Wordle. Though quite a few of our parents said they felt confident in the basics of Google searching we knew that many of them did not understand further commands or ideas to use when searching - so this is where we focussed. We also looked at wordle as our classes had used it a bit and we felt this would be a nice, clear tool to hook parents in with. Both our beginning choices proved to be a successful place to start as parents gave us feedback such as 'I thought I knew Google searching but I didn't know all these other things!' A few parents were keen to take Wordle back to their workplaces and share their new learning also.

Connections
During the sessions we emphasised the idea that the sessions were for the parents and we wanted them to be driven by the parents. To help keep the connections up between the sessions we have set up a wiki that will allow the parents access to notes, how to's, tips and also a place to ask questions and set directions for future sessions. We gave the parents a quick intro session to the wiki and will continue to recap on using the wiki in each session. It was good to see that a few parents and students have already posted ideas to the wallwisher on the wiki.

Next Steps:

• Our long term idea is that the sessions will be run by the students - but for our first ones we are providing clear models to the students on what the sessions could look like when they begin the teaching.
• To continue to build the audience each session.
  
• To continue to allow for the best availability of the sessions for parents.
• For the wiki to become more of a hub for the sessions and the parents continued learning.
  

Learning Link Reflections Term 2

This term another teacher and myself undertook the e-portfolio journey with our classes. It was a great chance to work alongside a teacher with amazing ideas who wants to challenge where we were going with them and how they are working. Through many conversations and sharing sessions we worked on creating e-portfolios via keynote. Within this there has been some challenges and changes but mainly it has been 2 terms of hard work that paid off hugely with the student learning, collaboration and sharing.

The tech
For our e-port's we utilised a resource that the students had a basic understanding of - Keynote. Keynote is the mac version of Microsoft Powerpoint - but much more simple to use. The great thing about this was that the students weren't having to spend a lot of time on learning the technology so thus could focus more simply of the content of their Learning Links and sharing of the learning.

It was amazing to watch the students as they conversed and collaborated on their Learning Links. Often sessions would involve little direct teaching from me but rather facilitation of students helping each other. This allowed the students to build more and more confidence in the skills they had by being teachers. Students were able to hook their computers up to the projector and run small group workshops where they could share their knowledge. By the tech not being so heavy to learn and navigate it allowed the students to focus on the sharing of their learning.

Benefits
Learning styles is a key area that we started the year learning about. It interested me to see groups of students who showed that they were very 'people smart' preferring to work in pairs or small groups while my 'self smart' students preferred to sit together but often didn't speak. For 2 students in particular they shared with me that their Learning Link was the best way to share their learning - they tended to be working on it in all opportunities, including their own time. All students thought that they were much better than sharing their learning via paper.

Problems
The biggest problem that we came across were the 2 following:

Movies
The crossing over of movie's from photo booth into keynote. Initially we were utilising the bonus of mac's drag and drop features but unfortunately we found that movies didn't transfer properly into keynote this way. By using the media button in Keynote to find and select movies we overcame that problem.

Storing:
Because the Keynote is not an online system it meant that students had to take the keynote on and off the server to work and update their Learning Link. In the early days, as the students were learning the systems needed it meant that a lot of work was lost. As students became more confident with this we have had fewer problems with this. Ideally we both agree that an online system would be a good way to move forward and we have been investigating a range of systems.

Looking Forward...
In retrospect I can see that the students need a lot of focussed teaching on reflecting on their learning and work. The students are highly capable at choosing work that shows their learning journey and movement in core areas. In fact several of the students thought of better ways of showing their learning than I had originally allowed them. The teacher I am working alongside utilised the 6 thinking hats to help her students reflect. In adopting this idea I found that my students became more confident as they were using the hats to guide their reflections.

One thing that I worry about is that by putting hurdles up that make students explain their learning in a written format that it may mean some students aren't always selecting work they want to. Perhaps a good next step for this is trialling the students verbally reflecting via Garageband or Photo Booth to place into the Learning Links alongside the learning sample.


Overall I think that between the 2 of us we have given the students a lot of ownership over their Learning Links. They were keen to select and share the learning that they have completed over the last few terms and the parents seem to have enjoyed sitting down with the students and talking over these things at home. It will be interesting to read the feedback from the students and the parents about them too.