Dreamtime / Excel

Dreamtime stories
Today we were introduced to a website. www.abc.net.au/dustechoes is a website focusing on indigenous Australian dreamtime stories. These stories are told in video form through the use of excellently vivid graphics. They can provide an excellent lead into learning about the indigenous Australian people and links in with Humanities domain in VELS. Note some of these videos may not be appropriate for classroom use due to the adult themes involved.

Using Inspiration, screen shots of the video and a little cutting and pasting I have created a retell of the video. This retell method enables creativity and links to ICT domain. The value in this activity comes through students needing to consider the main points to the story, and to which screen shots to use. They will gain a really good understanding of their chosen story, and have a creative output to be proud of. A possible follow up activity could be for the students to present their retell to the class and then show the actual video, then compare the two and open for discussion. Another follow on activity could be to act out the stories in the class. Alternatively they could be used as a tool to develop prediction and inferring skills. I'd imagine this working by swapping retells with other students and uncovering the images one at a time. After each image is revealed students need to predict or infer as much as they can. Obviously this won't work if everyone is doing the same story or has already viewed them all online. Thus thinking ahead would make it wise to pick a story each for the retells.



Microsoft Excel
On the left you will see a basic collection of data, a graph that has been prepared and an image inserted to make it look attractive. It uses the widespread and extremely powerful software tool Microsoft Excel, which forms part of Microsoft's office package.

This is an example of an output that could be achieved in a primary school lesson. This covers elements of chance and data and integrates technology. M&M's are used in this example although you could use a lot of focuses eg. hair colour, cars that drive past. It would be wise not to bring attention to things which may cause discomfort to the students eg. weight, friendship group.

This is a good introductory lesson into creating a chart. A suitable follow up, could be to prepare a football tipping chart. This would involve feature such as basic functions such as 'sum' and 'average', preparing a more advanced table, sorting and a more advanced chart. You could even introduce macros if you were game. Microsoft Excel's potential is massive. At the end you could pick the best work and use it to record the footy tipping results for the year.

If the cost of this software is an issue an alternative is availible. There is an open source (free) software package called Open Office. This includes a Excel equivalent called 'Calc'. Is available for a free download here.

Design Briefs & Quia Online

This week we began by having a look at design briefs.They are to work as a tool to aid in higher order thinking. Greg suggested they be used and written all over, a working draft, then later a good copy could be produced.

Here is one we worked on in a group and I've typed up. Click on it to see the detail.

The use of this design brief proforma did seem somewhat cumbersome, and after the fact, as we came to most of the conclusions before even picking up the sheet. That said, I am an adult, aware of things such as potential energy, while the activity would be posed to primary aged students. Additionally once students become more familiar with the proforma I'd expect them to better integrate it into the process. The benefits of this proforma are to promote detailed, documented higher order thinking. This could then be used when assessing the students, specifically in the domain of 'thinking processes'.

The task itself was completed in small groups, where we were given an rubber band, some card and a small frog cutout. The instruction was to make the frog jump. This turned out to be a simple yet effective open ended task, where there were many ways to achieve the goal.

As is my nature, I enjoy competition, and would of enjoyed a competitive aspect to the task, for example a high jump competition. As a teacher though, I realise that a lot of students don't like competitiveness, to the point where it can prevent students participation.

We then moved on to look at the Quia website, which is an excellent resource to develop interactive online learning tools.

You can easily develop you very own quizzes ( see image left), as well as a whole lot of interactive games. You can also search existing quizzes or activities created by other users.

This website is thorough, and does what it is intended to do, very well. It is easy to use, navigate and tailor to very specific needs.

The amount of settings which you can change is surprising including input settings, access settings, feedback settings and reporting settings. These include randomising to inhibit cheating, question value changing, grading open ended questions online, setting time limits and secret question to restrict access (see image left)etc.

Features of the website include:

Matching game Flashcards Concentration game Word search puzzle Battleship Challenge board Columns activity Hangman game

Jumbled words Ordered list activity Picture perfect activity Pop-ups Rags-to-riches game Scavenger hunt Cloze activity Patterns

As a teacher I could specifically develop a quiz for my topic (eg. inferring) and tailor it to the level of my students. I could ask a group, or the whole class go onto the computers and access the quiz, via the URL I'd written on the board, or from my quiz homepage which could be saved as a favourite on their computers. Later I could print off the results for evidence for reporting (Assessment of Learning) or to tailor the teaching for struggling students (Assessment for Learning). See image on left for results screen.

As an early finish activity I could have another activity, which needs the secret word to access, which I could give them, when I am satisfied they have completed what was asked of them. This lesson would enable students to get on with their tasks without the need for constant teacher aid, which would free me as the teacher to rove the classroom and give help in other areas needed.

Quia offers a 30 day trial in which you can see how good this website is. A one year subscription costs US$49 per instructor licence. Group discounts are available. If you were to use Quia extensively then the cost would be well worth it. Even better if your school were to pay. If you only used it once or twice a year then perhaps just using the trial version is your best bet. The biggest downside though is you'll lose your work once the trial expires.

Publisher

Today's review is of Microsoft Publisher. This software forms part of Microsoft's 'Office' package and is thus installed on most computers (well not Apples).
With this software being so widespread I was surprised that so many people hadn't used it before.

We used it in the workshop to make a travel brochure (see image left). Publisher is great for these template type designs. It makes attractive designs at the click of a button and requires only the user to insert correct information. The user can then play around with the design, e.g. insert images, change fonts and colors.

As a classroom activity is it appropriate for students as young as Grade One. I have had the experience of teaching a lesson where the output required was a yearly calendar.
The image (left) took only a few clicks of the mouse to create and was similar to what I was expecting from Grade Ones and Twos.

However when students don't have the basic editing and navigational skills, simple tasks can become very complicated.
Thus developing these skills is really important, as they are transferable across a whole range of software products.

I ran this class twice, with two different groups and learned some things in the process.

1. Even when I tried my hardest to give clear step by step instructions (demonstrating on projector and writing up the steps on the whiteboard) the class was chaos. The students without the core computer skills were all having problems. Even if something only takes a few clicks to make, a few clicks in the wrong direction can get you somewhere else entirely.
   
2. Students couldn't retain the whole group instruction, I was getting a lot of questions and I couldn't answer individual questions at a fast enough rate.

Therefore I came up with a solution the second time I taught the class. I created a video playing it on loop through the projector. It shows how to get through the simple yet difficult steps.
That meant I didn't have the same amount of questions being flung at me and I had time to manage the classroom and do other things teachers do. E.g. fix the printer.


The software( BB FlashBack) comes in a free version for download.
Note image quality has been reduced when converting to the blog's media player, image quality is normally excellent.

Coming back to Publisher we also covered the use of it for making a e-Portfolio. This is something I have never done before and was genuinely impressed. It enables users to make a website (browser run file would be more appropriate) in a quick, easy, attractive way with a range of detailed templates to use. Although these templates were aimed at making a business website they can be easily changed. The links on the page were also easy to change which I was particularly pleased with. Now to get onto my own e-Portfolio!

An other practical issue you might like to consider is the availability of color printing. This can make a big difference to the quality of the final piece. A solution could be to tell students before hand to that it will only be black and white and to show them how to preview in Gray scale. The even better solution is to get access to a colour printer, although expensive, it makes a real difference.