Continuous formation

When I'm working in OneNote on the night before classes, I always find it interesting to see who else is there working.  The Windows10 version of OneNote (and OneNote Online) both include a People Presence option to show you who else is working in the same Notebook/ClassNotebook.   When you click on the name of the page, you jump there -- so you can work together. While I was doing screenshots, you can see how another student has entered the ClassNotebook, and the first student has moved from one page to another as they do their homework. And then, when I flipped over into our Faculty OneNote , I had one teacher looking at how to send emails to parents for one of her extracurricular programs (in our Tech Help section), while one was working on our Student Leadership Conference and the other two working on incoming pages. While there is an aspect to this of "surveillance", it's meant to energize collaboration.   In the ClassNotebook, it ...

I thought that everybody did this! But apparently, not.  So this was my XKCD 10,000 moment this week.  I happened to tweet the following -- and I think it's my popular tweet of all time.  And as you can see, I was just at the end of class and tapped it out quickly... error included! The year is just starting and students aren't yet used to the expectations of responses when we do a Desmos activity, I've found I've had to prime the pump sometimes. I am logged into Desmos as the teacher and I project the Dashboard on the projector.  I try to get to the dashboard as quickly as possible so that I can click Anonymize, which makes the students' login names those of famous mathematicians/scientists/engineers. (Suggestion to Desmos -- it would be nice to be able to enter an activity with Anonymous turned on.)   This means students can make errors without making them publicly although invariably, some students will yell out their pseudonym. Then I use the PAUS...

So I'm only on the 2nd class of the year in my Grade 10 Math course so far.  We start late, and we only see them for 3 hours a week, so yes, we move a little slow. I had set them some review problems in Grade 9 Math, mostly questions of simple algebra, linear equations, graphs of lines, etc.  And had them work on the questions about as freely as I could -- but since they're new, they didn't express much freedom. They didn't talk much, they certainly didn't talk to each other, and they didn't check their work with each other. This will change.   I had deliberately told them that I did not put the answers at the bottom of the OneNote page and that they would have to check their work somehow. Ten minutes in, I did a screen capture of a student's work from their OneNote Section and pasted it into my OneNote page for the day and asked them " How does the student know they're correct ?" The obvious answers came up: Do it again Check with anot...

I don't usually talk about aspects of Office365 that require one of the paid subscriptions because, well, they cost money and I know teachers and schools have to prioritize their budgets (or have it prioritized for them). Remember that Office365 level A1 is free for schools, teachers & students and the tools you do get are very powerful -- you can check it out here .  But if you are a paid Office365 user, you have access to another handy little tool included in your subscription (and since you're paying for it, you might as well use it!) Bookings is a (relatively simple) appointment booking web service. It works like this: Visit http://portal.office.com and click on "All your Apps".  It is hidden away under the main Office Apps -- and your admin could have it turned off, although it is turned on by default, so shhhh...  It's available in the paid A3/A5 levels, just not the free A1 :(   Now, it's okay that it's not immediately visible because your ...

Even though everything is in the cloud, we really like to have a copy on our computers (we work on public transit, in places with no or poor wifi, and we never really trust the cloud). So when we're working in a cloud space, here's how you can sync the files to your device. We have a Math Department Team on Microsoft Teams (it is free if you'd like to do the same thing at your school) and a Channel within the Team for each course to discuss, build and share resources. I teach MPM2D, our Grade 10 course, and so all I really care about is Grade 10 math.  Sorry, Calc & Stats! So, within each Team Channel there's a dedicated file space - and we work on files together there. Course descriptions, tests, projects, you name it.  But I don't want to have to go to Teams to get the files! I'd like them on my hard drive and be able to get to them through File Explorer (like I have since 1995!) Click on the FILES button when you're in the Channel that you wan...

So yesterday I mentioned about using Teams to do Screencasts - you can see that blog post by clicking here .  Here's a brief run-down of the process. When you're in the Teams application, either as a reply to a message, or a brand new conversation, click on the MEET NOW button.  It looks like a little video camera. You'll get Teams Meeting popping up... you'll be doing a call, but of course, there's no one on the other end.  Type in a Subject -- I'd choose the Course, Textbook, page and question number if it's applicable, otherwise some combination of curriculum standard. Click on MEET NOW to being the meeting.  We want to start recording in order to get the video part of the screencast.  Click on the 3-dot menu button and choose START RECORDING.  (It says "Preview" because recording is still in pretty active development -- see below).  The recording has now started and you'll see the red icon in the upper right of the screen. Now...

I was thrilled that this year the Math Department has decided to move fully on to Microsoft Teams to provide Math Extra Help.  While we'll continue to provide face-to-face drop-in help during lunch, students in any course can post a question on the Math & CS Team , in whichever channel corresponds to their course. Microsoft Teams is freely available to everyone so any school (or individual teacher!) can give this a try.  If you already have Office365 it should be an option (although your IT department may have turned it off!  If you don't see it, ask!).  Anyone can sign up for their own Teams space just by clicking on the link above. Microsoft Teams, in case you haven't encountered it yet, is a conversation space that brings in all manner of collaboration options.  Picture an organized Facebook.  Within each conversation space, you get a file space too (picture a "google drive" attached to every Whatsapp group, say) along with being able to plug i...