It's all about the Hook

Another great day of learning.  

The point was made about hooking learners in to get them engaged and how being creative is a real key to doing this. Many different skills for the 21st Century models have creativity in them.  Two things I want to follow up from this was reading some work by Holt and also watching the documentary 'The heART of the matter'.  It is sad that the opportunities to create drop more and more the higher up the school system that people go.

We want our learners to be creators not just consumers of content.  When pupils are creating they should have agency over the creative tools they use.  Problem solving, communicating and collaborating is developed through creative skills.

Creating is such a huge part of learning.  Dorothy said "It is in creating that knowledge is embedded."  I believe this to be a really important thought as too many times content is just a tick that it is covered without it truly being embedded.

I had never realised that when using Hapara I could drag the learners tiles to different places and this makes them easier to monitor.  In the past I have used groupings but I haven't done this recently and will get back to using it where appropriate.

You Tube

Learners should not have Youtube channels.  Things they want to share should be created through their Google Drive.  If the learners have Media folders in Hapara they can save videos etc there.  Mine don't at present and I will have to get admin to make these or otherwise use another folder they already have called 'Learning Stuff'.

It is great that I could change the setting properly on my Youtube account and now my content is safer. It is recommended that we add Google Certified Education to our playlists and I will do this later.

(Right about now I feel I should be making a Google Keep list of all the things I should be doing as follow up.)

Play lists look very cool.  You can make different playlists for different topics.  You can share playlists onto a blog, site, doc, slides etc so the pupils have the ability to watch multiple things about a topic.  You can collaborate on playlists with staff - that way you can all add interesting ideas about a topic you are working on.  You can save other people's playlists (but you can't add or remove items if it is not your own).  This is something that I need to start using more to make learning more rewindable.

Media deep dive with Dorothy

media or multimedia creates emotional connections and should be multi sensory.  It sould include sight sound and motion (sisomo).  We are all creators and consumers of multimedia.

When making videos it's not about how much it costs it's about what you do with it -  having a steady camera will improve quality of video so much (get a tripod). Video taken on a phone should be landscape. It is essential to be careful about lighting so you can actually see the subject of the video.  It can also be important to do voice overs if the sound quality is not good.

Green Screen is the name for chroma key and can be green or blue.  When using a green screen you will need to use editing software such as remove.bg, keynote, use instant alpha?  If going to the expense of getting a green screen then also cover the flooring as many kids will do things on the floor in their presentations and it is hard to remove the carpet from the background.

I like the idea about creating a pod cast and will look through other classes and schools to see what they are doing.  I may look at this being a task for a group in class later this year.

Google Drawings

Yay, a reminder about how to use the masking tool in Google Drawings.  Last week I had to put circles around all the images I wanted to cut out.  If I had used the Mask tool it would have been so much easier! 

After years of changing the background colour I have now found out that when you download as .png it will remove tiled background - this will be a time saver.

I must get my class to use the explore tool more as everything is under creative commons.  It is a really good tool as you don't have to go onto another tab

Google Slides 

Some hints for using slides:  Before beginning to make a slide for a presentation you need to ask yourself, "What is story you are going to tell? what is message?" Refine it down so it is specific then plan your slide show.  make your content before worrying about colour, start from blank slide, pictures are worth 1000 words, when presenting don't just read the slide, use consistent formatting, use sisomo, a big font is essential if it is for presenting to a large group, don't use too many words per slide.

You can add extra functionality to Slides and Docs by using add ons, this can be found in toolbar at the top of the document.

Some add ons that were show: Icons -  for slides can customise items free, the noun project - similar functionality but there is a cost associated.  With both these add ons you can change colour on both using colour picker.  The 'maths type' add on gives you all of the maths symbols in one place rather than having to insert special character.   Drawp has some good graphic organisers.  The add on's have icons under them that show what they documents they are for.  Scratch blocks generator is a good add on for students to practice writing code.  The blocks come up looking like Scratch blocks but cannot be transferred across to Scratch.

If you are wanting to use an add on with students they will need to have the add on.  These can be pushed out by the admin which saves the risk of students getting too many/inappropriate for purpose add ons.  Add on's don't travel across google slides to google docs so you will need to add them to each application.

The last teaching part of the day gave me some good tips

1. check the time zones on blogs

2. add me as an admin to my professional blog so I will not loose it if I change school. 

(more to add to my Google Keep)

install disabled by admin

For the create section I chose to use the add on drawp.  Unfortunately when I began this I was locked out of getting add-on's (Thank's Kelsey for remedying this). So my create was made by copying Kerry's slide of the organiser.