Google Classroom

Ok, so I am totally late to the party. But I can cope with that. I have been toying with trying Google Classroom for a while now. We have a VLE at school where we have to put our homework assignments, so it seemed kind of redundant for us. But then, this week I changed my mind. I wanted to find out what it was all about.

No guesses about the outcome of course. I loved it.

Why? Well, I loved that my students had to turn in their work. One of the major problems I was having with allowing my year 8s to turn in their work on Google Drive was that I never got it. They would spell my name wrong, or share it with the wrong email address. The email address I use for Google Drive isn't one I can actually get access to, so I never knew. With Classroom they have to turn in their work, and I can hassle the ones who are late in doing so. I can give them a grade that they have to look at, and leave them a comment with suggested targets for next time.

It's Tuesday. I've already used it twice. Already one pupil has asked if he can use it next week. I'd set his class a presentation task on the theme of sacrifice. I usually wouldn't see their presentations, but this time I can have a flick through before they present them and grade them before the rest of the class sees them.

Just in case this doesn't convince you. Here's a handy Youtube Clip with lush music.

A webtool I came across last year was this; Tour Builder a Google Earth plug in. In fact I even explained this when I was at a conference in the demo slam. And I won!! So exciting. I've only used it a couple of times in class, but I do totally love it.

The basic premise of it is that you can create a tour across the world using Google Earth. This can then have different pictures and videos added to come up with an explanation of each stop along the way.

I used mine to create one about the journey that a Muslim will go on if they are doing Hajj. My Tour Builder began at Heathrow aiport and then flew across to Jeddah. There will links to the Ka'baa and the pillars of Jamraat in Mina. It was really easy to make and I loved using all the search boxes to find the pictures I wanted, rather than having to save them and then insert them. You could change the icons for the different places you stopped off at and then in the white box on the side insert detailed information to explain each one, or even link in a video. I did struggle to work out how to put the videos in. That is something I will need to work on as it wasn't quite as straight-forward as linking a youtube clip. 

What I really liked about it was the ability to see the distance that a Muslim will travel, thus realising that a tremendous undertaking it is. The class were seriously impressed by it. At points we could have done with zooming in on the writing, but we were able to make the pictures bigger which was necessary so that everyone could see. My normally not wonderfully behaved class completely lapped it up! I guess I will have to wait till next week to see if they actually understood or took anything in. One boy even said later that the lesson was too fun for him to have learnt anything. I think he did. They'll be a tough answer and question session for us to try out next week....

You can see it here. 

Picking a name out of a hat is boring

Here is something I love - I used to pick out of a jar, or let children answer when they have their hands up. But then, I found this: fruit machine. I think it is very important as a teacher to have good questioning and answering sessions. People who are shy are unlikely to put up their hands and often it is the loudest people who get the chance to share. Previously I have used jam jars with all the names of the class in them, but this is quicker and more effective and I never seem to get round to making my jam jars. This is easy to use and I love the noises it makes when it selects the child. I now need to work out how you can have all the names of different groups saved so you don't need to imput them everytime. 

I'm planning to try it out in a lesson tomorrow with a year 7 class. I have a new teacher coming to observe my lesson and we will be using all manner of different internet based tools; I can't imagine what he'll think. But maybe he'll catch on and I will find a partner in crime. 

Screen Cast

Sometimes when I have met with parents to discuss their child's progress they have said to my that their son or daughter has sometimes expressed a lack of understanding in how to answer the different questions they have to complete in their Religious Studies lessons. This is a completely understandable issue. I have been thinking recently about the concept of flipped learning. By this the learning is done at home in preparation for the lesson and in the lesson instead of doing the teaching you are able to do fun and creative activities in order to demonstrate what has been understood.

I am a little daunted by trying this out, but in my reading one thing which struck me was the importance given to videos as a means through which information could be shared with the class. I have already written about how much I love that here. I thought therefore that it might be sensible to create some videos explaining the different answering structures we use and how they could be deployed. Encouragingly in one of my lessons I said to a class I had made one, and one of the boys in there said he had already watched it. Result. I plan to make some more for each of the different questions so that in homework time I can encourage the classes to watch over the videos as a reminder of what they should be doing.

To do this I used a tool called Screen Cast O-Matic. It's terribly simple; just open it up, pull the recording area to the right amount of your screen and hit record. You can even record a voiceover of you awkwardly explaining something. I am the Queen of Awkward so this of course was right up my alley.

The best Chrome Extensions for teachers.

So I totally do not want to be all over dramatic. But I do feel chrome is like, utterly fantastic. It still amazes me that I can have all these awesome extensions in my toolbar, some of which I use several times a day. Here are a few my life is all te better for:

• Eye Dropper:

This allows you to pick any colour on a webpage and find out the colour value. If you are then designing a webpage, or social media banner you can use consistent colours. Instead of endlessly trying to match the colour by pressing at the right point on the colour circle, you can get the precise one quickly and easily. I showed this to a friend on Saturday who was designing a web banner to match her book cover and she said it was revolutionary.

• Tab Scissors

With this you can cut open your tabs. Then the two tabs will appear next to each other on the screen. I find this so useful in class when we might be looking at a bible passage and I also want to be completing a quiz saved on a webpage. Or I might want to refer to two webpages at the same time.

• Glue

After you have finished with the tabs, use this extension to glue the webpages back together again.

• Save to Google Drive

This saves any webpage you have been looking at to google drive. When I am discussing big ethical issues with my scholarship class such as euthanasia or the just war theory we will look at websites together and then anything good can be saved to the shared Google Drive folder and they can refer back to it when completing essays and preps for me.

• Padlet

I use the webpage Padlet a lot in my classroom in order to collate the opinions of my students. With this extension I can easily see the names of all of my walls and quickly make a new one for the class without having to go to the full page and sign in.

• Save as a PDF

With this I can save any website as a pdf. Super useful if I want to print off easily what is stored on a whole page. Maybe I want them to refer to the stickies we made on Linoit in their homework. Well with this I can do that easily. The PDF quickly downloads to my computer and I can save it on my computer and print it out for them or save it to the VLE. .

• Snippy

This allows you to just save one section of your webpage. So if there was a particularly useful paragraph in an article I was reading on an ethical issue I could snip it and save it to my snippets to print off for class later. So so much easier than saving the whole thing and then cutting out the best bit manually with scissors. I basically don’t even use scissors anymore. Ha.

Well I am sure there are a lot more super cool chrome apps that I do not even know about. Would love to hear which ones you find super useful.

And just a final picture, here are all the chrome extensions I have on my computer in all their beautiful glory.

TedED and why I love them

This blogpost marks the end of my second week as a fully fledged blogger. I know I still have a lot to learn. But I am excited by what has happened and the pageviews my blog has generated. Thank you so much for checking in with me.

As it it Friday I thought a short post is in order. So have you checked out TedED? I cannot put into words how amazing this resource is and how cool the videos are. Really well executed and clear, perfectly pitched for school children. While there are not a lot of Religion ones, I have found this one all about big questions one might ask and I have used it twice this week when beginning essay planning conversations with the scholars groups.

There are others in this series and they can be used to provoke some really helpful debate in philosophical lessons. I began the lesson by watching the clip then discussing with them some of the unanswered questions they had. After doing this we talked about the fact that the essays they have to answer in exams are essentially just like this; unanswered questions for them to explore and discuss. I may even allow them the chance to try and make a cool animated video to explore one issue we have been covered in class. So, so much more fun than just endlessly planning essays!

Here is a link to the other Philosophy and Religion ones.

Have you found any amazinf videos for using in RS lessons? I'd love to hear about them.

My favourite collaborative tools.

Collaboration is such a big word in education right now. I once went to a seminar which began with, and I kid you not 20 different videos or pictures of famous people in films talking about the importance of collaboration. Suffice to say, it was not a good seminar!

Despite this, collaboration in the classroom is something I really believe in. I think it is fundamentally important for pupils to be able to brainstorm ideas and share them together so they have a real chance to learn from one another. Here is a list of a few of the ways I do this in the classroom.

• Padlet and Linoit

Both of these online tools allow a class of children to share their ideas on a certain subject. You can get them to answer a question together, or share what they have learnt from the lesson as part of the plenary. If we are brainstorming we focus on what has been written and then whittle down to which we think are the best suggestions. I would then share the webpage with them so when they are completing homework later on they can refer back to what was suggested and utilise the best ideas.

• Google Docs

This can be used in a number of different ways. I can create a document which they share their ideas into, or they can complete a piece of work with another person without the hassle of sending versions back and forth. They can make slideshows, word documents or spreadsheets. Last night I found this super helpful video explaining how to use collaboration on Google drive.

• Videos

This is a new one for me but next week I am going to try creating videos with my year 7s and 8s as a revision tool. We spend a lot of time brainstorming different Common Entrance questions and talking about how they could be answered. I am planning to get them to record a point for a question and upload it to a folder. When they are all uploaded we will edit them in iMovie and each child will cut together the best points so we will get an idea of what might be written in the answer. I am so hoping it will work, I will report back and let you know!

I’d love to hear any other useful collaboration tools you use in your classroom. Thanks for reading.

Getting into technology: Some tips

I currently work at a school where there has not been a huge push for integrated technology. There are a few teachers who are keen but it is certainly not the majority. Sometimes when I talk to people I mention things and I can literally see their eyes glazing over with boredom. At brunch with a friend today, we were chatting over some uses of tech for her. She says she feels very scared of getting started so we began chatting about some easy steps. This is obviously not an exhaustive list; I was careful here to suggest tools which can be used in classes where you do not have access to iPads of laptops.

• Name generator

I love this for picking which children should answer the next question. Everyone gets picked and they seem to love the graphics of the typewriter and fruit machine. After each name has been selected on the fruit machine you can delete that person to ensure there is no repetition.

• Plickers

where your pupils hold up some paper indicating their answer to a question and you can scan the room to quickly see who has got the answer correct.

• • Twitter

  This may seem like an obvious one, but I love the fun you can have when you get into the mind of a character and come up with some ideas of how they would have felt. I do this for biblical characters.

World War One in Religious Studies

With the centenary of World War One being commemorated this year, as a school we have been asked to teach lessons for a week which help further the understanding of the pupils into the war. We have been encouraged to fit this to our subject. Being a Religious Studies teacher this isn’t totally straightforward so I have been racking my brain over what would work. I finally sent my list of suggestions to the deputy head last night with what I am planning. I will of course be making good use of web tools.

• Year 6 will be looking at the lives of Jewish people in the First World War.

I have found some superb explanations of the accounts of Jewish soldiers on my learning. One of them is about Hyman Rutstein who kept his tefillin with him at all times and there are suggestions for questions to use in discussions which would help pupils to explore his having this would have meant to him. I also hope we will use resources such as the Google Cultural Institute to help us explore content online about the lives of Jewish soliders. I was very excited to see that the POLIN Museum of Polish History is now available on Google Street View.

• Year 7 & 8 will look at the cost of war.

I want us to look at the scale of the war, and look at Aquinas’ Just War theory to see if the war fits these requirements. As well as watching moving war footage we will look at the idea of trench warfare. In order to do this I’m planning to use a Google Earth Hack which is an overlay of Battle of Verdun. I think this will help to show the true cost of the war.

I am also hoping to find some letters written from the perspective of an army padre but haven't been successful yet. How about you? Is your school doing anything in November? Have you got any great suggestions of resources?

Get creative with quizzes

I teach a lot of boys.

One thing which I have learnt about boys is that they love a bit of competition. In all honesty I think love is a bit of an understatement. They love to get one up on their friend. When I first started teaching this meant group quizzes with them putting their hands up, which them moved to using small whiteboards and now I am all about the web software. Why do I think this is better you might ask? Well the reason is that they are engaged. They are so focused on getting the answer right that they don’t realize that I am basically giving them a test. Often you can have the data of the results emailed to you so it’s easy to find out if there is a topic that you need to go over. Final reason is that they love it!

The newest one I have found is Kahoot. This is very much similar to Socrative and allows you to make a multiple choice quiz. The questions come up on the interactive whiteboard and the options for the answers come up on their tablets. There are different coloured boxes to represent the different answer options. The players pick the right coloured box for the corresponding answer. They then find out if they got the answer right or wrong. After everyone has answered, the correct answer is revealed and you can see how many people chose each different option. Then, and this was our favourite bit, there is a leader board of the top five players. This is judged on speed and getting the correct answer.

At the end you can download the information about how each child answered. This meant I could go over some aspects of the quiz they got wrong with them.

I really recommend this. The best thing to me was that the whole class wanted to repeat the quiz and started asking when we would be using it again. That’s a win from me.

Let me know if you try it out, and if you know of any other great quiz software available on the web.

Copy of an article I wrote for Satips Magazine

I wrote an article about using IT in the classroom and it was published. A very exciting day for me..... http://t.co/mrXBXAgsiB

— Kate Pellereau (@whatkatepdoes) September 18, 2014

An article I wrote for Saptips magazine

If someone had labeled me as someone who encouraged collaboration back in the 1940s it would have been an enormous insult. At that time the only use of the term would have been to suggest assistance with the enemy during the last war. How things have changed! Within the Technology community this is one of the current buzzwords. On a recent Google in Education conference this was a big theme. I have lost track of the amount of articles I have read where new ways to collaborate within education are explained. If we take a moment to think about our teaching, I am sure we would realize that collaboration has become important. Perhaps we encourage it though group work, paired work or by setting a homework where pupils are working together on a presentation for the rest of the class. A new way in which collaboration is becoming more possible is through our use of ICT.

Technology within education is an emerging market that even traditional private schools are starting to embrace. At my school we have iPads, laptops and two ICT rooms. We have not gone along the 1:1 route, preferring instead to educate staff in what they could be using in their classrooms believing they are able to make the decision about what is relevant and useful for them. I am involved in this training providing one to one sessions focused on the particular needs a teacher has. I have begun regularly attending lessons with a few staff assisting them as they try to integrate ICT in their lessons as well as running INSET sessions for staff. For me this has been a fascinating journey that began only in September when 20 iPads appeared in my building. I picked one up, did some research, found some good apps and began using them. I teach Religious Studies, not a traditional subject to be linked with Tech. I found that as my understanding and knowledge of what was available grew, I was able to bring in easier ways to do things, and started having some wow lessons where pupils were engaged, excited and interested in what we were learning.

My experiences this year have lead to some reflections on the role that Technology can have in a Prep School. I am not a teacher who believes that the lesson changes to fit the technology; instead my lessons are enhanced by what I am able to do. Dare I say it; sometimes I am able to save time too!

What I like most is the fact that my pupils are able to learn from one another. In my view the time where the only way to teach was to stand up at the front and recite information is gone. While didactic teaching can have its place; this is not the only way to learn. For myself, lessons are a time when we come together to discuss a topic. Everyone can learn from everyone and often I find myself leaning on the table and saying ‘gosh, I had not thought of that!’ We do research together on iPads as we begin a topic and then pull our ideas together. Or I might set them a competition and they have to quickly find the answer to a question from the Internet. I am fortunate to Apple TV in my classroom, which is invaluable for this. With older children if we are trying to work out how to answer a particular Common Entrance question I might set up a Padlet wall and they log onto it and offer a response. After everyone has contributed we can look through and together decide which are the strongest. Being able to learn from one another encourages a positive working environment and setting Internet challenges teaches research skills. Those who might not have the confidence to put their hand up during a question and answer session might gain the confidence they need to speak from the knowledge their answer comes from the Internet.

The second reason I think the use of Technology is important is because it engages the pupils. Everyone in our school loves a lesson when they are using iPads. My year 7s have just completed a piece of coursework using Google Drive where they have shared their work with me and I have been able to make live comments on it; highlighting different sections that I was not happy with and making suggestions for improvements. They’ve been able to research easily, import pictures easily and even cite their sources easily. Another class enjoyed making presentations after visiting different places of cultural significance from around the world using the Google Cultural Institute. Our year 3s have even made Popplet mind maps about what they think Jesus is like after choosing and importing a picture they liked from the Internet. For these children technology is normal. Many of those I teach are fortunate enough to own a tablet and they will sit at home doing all kinds of cool things on them. What I want to do is bring that sense of wow into the lessons. I try to teach how the children want to learn; For a tech savvy generation that means bringing in use of ICT.

My final benefit for the use of ICT is the time saving it can offer staff. This I had not fully anticipated, but have very much been reaping the benefits of. The coursework already mentioned usually fills the entire Summer term, with some pupils catching up during the holidays. This has not happened this year. All of them are finished and the reason for this is the swift responses I have been able to make to their work through our use of Google Apps. Other time saving comes through simple apps which we use to make posters for our display boards. Or a member of staff might set up a quiz online which self marks and then the results are emailed to the teacher for them to input in their mark book.

Something I have recently been trying out has been personalized work for lower ability pupils. Using iPads I am able to set them a worksheet that has been changed to suite their learning needs. If they struggle to write sometimes completing this on an iPad is extremely profitable as their typing speed might be quicker than their writing speed. On the whole they enjoy this, and it boosts their confidence to not always be the last to finish a task. The proficiency they might have with ICT means that for once they might be able to help a peer with something. I had a lovely lesson recently when we took some year 8s down to a year 3 class and they helped one another to use Padlet.

Making the effort to use technology in the classroom is only worthwhile if there are benefits.

Reflections on Google in Education Conference: October 2014

I went on a conference last week. It was the first day of my half term and I travelled all the way up to London with a heavy suitcase that I had to lug around with me. This to me is evidence that I must have thought I could get something from it! Also evidence that I was going to sunny Sicily the next day. Now I am not someone who gives up holiday easily, so do so unless it was for something really special. It was a Google in education summit. As with the summit I attended in May I got a lot from it.

A few things which I have been pondering during my holiday have been the following.

• How to start using videos more in my lessons.
• To stop telling my students to just ‘research’ on an ipad
• To work out how to start using coding in lessons.

The other great thing was to spend time chatting with other teachers and hearing their perspective on technology and what they have been doing in the classroom. I’ve been really thinking about how to improve my coding which is so basic and heard about a website called Computing at Schools that has lots of different courses I could go on. So far they mostly seem to be a very long way away, but I will keep checking back. I definitely want to understand how the Raspberry Pi works.

With videos I have set up a Youtube channel which I am going to get going this week and I will try exploring some flipped learning with some of my older students.