Continuous formation

It often takes folks a bit to get used to OneNote because there are no "files" -- there are only pages, like a Binder, and everything is placed on a page.  So, when students do their work and present it for feedback, it's on a page.  What's great is you don't have to find, open and manage all those files -- all the student work is already stored & organized inside of OneNote for you. When it comes to group work, we have the same luxury. In the Collaboration Space, I create a Section for the activity -- usually I title it with the date and the name of the activity. Then, I create the first page (or two) with the instructions for the activity ( Opening Day Activity in the example above -- we start in the Collab on Day One so they can get used to "playing" inside the OneNote) and any templates or rubric as subpages ( How to give feedback and CopyThisPage in the example above). Each group (or each student -- this work for individual activ...

So my new year's resolution is to write one blog post a week. I thought I would start off by answering a question I was asked during #PubPD in October.  Now, #PubPD is a fun evening where teachers gather together in a local pub and over the course of an hour, we discuss questions posted to Twitter, alongside teachers in pubs around the world.  During the dinner that preceeded us discussing the questions posted on Twitter, Melinda Lula , our Hamilton #PubPD organizer asked me " What is your classroom like? " ... and I never really got around to answering that question.  So I'll do that here. My first statement would be that I don't religiously follow any approach or pedagogy; I think it's important to be agnostic in education since, unlike math or physics, we can't know 'best' or 'right' (we do know wrong , obviously, and I don't go there).  I'm not a bandwagon guy (okay, maybe OneNote, but that's like being in favour of havin...

So I mentioned that one of the apps inside of Office365, Delve , is my best friend in a previous post  - mostly because it's an intelligent agent that helps me prioritize (and find) things I should be working on.  If you haven't clicked on the Waffle in Office365 and then clicked on the Delve button, you should stop reading and try it now! Beside the intelligence behind what you see, Delve has another layer to help you and your students keep things together: the Board.  The Board helps you deal with a "Shared with Me" that has gone out of control (well, to be fair, it goes out of control because you're using the Cloud effectively, so that's a good thing). When you see documents in Delve that "go together" you can pin them to a Board, allowing you to create a page of documents all on a particular project. What you see below you is what I see this morning when I click on "Me" (Cal Armstrong) ... it shows the two documents we used schoo...

So we had a snow day Monday.  I won't go in to the gloriousness that a snow day is here in Canada.  Suffice it to say that they're as close to heaven as you can get without dying. It came at a cost; there was 35cm of snow across my neighbourhood.  My neighbours are not teachers, they tend to be young families or retired folks -- so when I get a snow day, I grab my shovel and start clearing the snow from their driveways and steps.  I know how privileged I am to get the day free and not have to drive, slowly and dangerously, to work on snow-covered roads. As I was shoveling through five different driveways, I was using my phone to play music.  I kept getting this buzz of messages coming in, though... which is unusual on a snow day.  It turned out that students, safely tucked away at home, were using Yammer (our conversation space) to ask and answer math questions unbidden by their teachers! Now, we had great success at Christmas prior to exams as students ...

When we first introduced the OneNote Binders , amongst the immediate requests was for group collaboration spaces.  For the first year, we had the teachers request them through our IT request system and manually created them and assigned the permissions.  But, given the convenience of OneNote, we knew we wanted a dynamic solution... and so we rolled out a webapp that would create groups of any size or shape! The teacher goes to the webapp and decides on a name for the Project and then assigns students to groups.  Some teachers will create only one group and then they have a section that everyone can contribute to.  Groups can be of any size and students can be in more than one group.  The groups can also change as needed, so if you need to shuffle a person to a different group, once you do the permissions are changed to reflect their new position. Inside of each team's section group are the regular sections for Assignments, Marking (that is private to ...

Okay, so it's not Buffalo, but one of our teachers lives out in the country and due to the recent snowstorm was unable to come to school.  Normally, that isn't a great emergency as we do our own coverages for missing teachers internally so students tend to get a teacher who can keep them moving in their subject areas. But I was chatting with our snow-bound music teacher while she was at home and she was worried about one of her classes that she wanted to touch base with.   I mentioned that it wouldn't be a problem to quickly throw together a Lync video-conference with her students and I'd be happy to do the physical setup at the school end. So she went to Outlook and created a Lync meeting -- it's easy if you've ever made an appointment in Outlook... click the NEW LYNC MEETING in the toolbar and it creates a conference room that everyone is invited to.  Although you set a time, it exists as soon and as long as someone logs in. So, she sent the Invitation...

I've been busy with the wrap-up of the Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI) so this has had to wait. But I caught the article " 10 Things Every Teacher Should Know How To Do With Google Docs " and felt a parallel article describing similar processes with the free offerings from Microsoft was required (not a Microsoft employee and I get no special favours from Microsoft!).  Not because I have anything against GoogleDocs but rather that Microsoft OneDrive offers a great alternative especially if you're in a mixed/BYOD environment. Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is, for starters, a cloud-based storage system like Dropbox or GoogleDrive - the Microsoft offering provides many GBs of storage space (used to be 7, now 15 and I expect it will increase over time) with the option to purchase more.  However, like GoogleDrive, it is tied to a powerful Office system providing support for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and surveying. 1. Share &...

OneNote, as well as I can gauge from the number of tweets I see tagged with it, has been undergoing a marked increase in user base. So, I've been trying to mirror what folks do with GoogleDocs and show how it's done with OneNote. To wit... " How do you direct someone to a specific spot in your Google Doc? " from Alice Keeler's blog post http://www.alicekeeler.com/teachertech/2014/04/30/directing-someone-to-a-specific-spot-in-your-google-doc/   How do you direct someone to a specific place in your OneNote notebook?  The thing about OneNote is, of course, that it can contain anything -- text, images, audio, video, files, links -- so that you can really direct folks to the exact content you want.  Objects in OneNote are in containers (you see them as light grey lines when you select them) and so when you RIGHT-CLICK on the object, you get the option to "Copy Link to Paragraph" Paste that link in an email or on the web ... if they have the On...

I have the incredible good fortune to watch a French teacher work over the next month.  She's taken on the responsibility for a Grade 10 French summer course for students.  The challenge is that she is teaching it online to students here in Canada and overseas, specifically China and Pakistan.  They are all existing students in our school that are trying to get ahead in our French program -- that's important because they are already familiar with the technology commonly used in our school.  While many school leverage the learning management system, the OneNote Binder has given her a way to not only structure her content but closely observe and provide feedback on every student's work from minute to minute. She is using Lync as her communication medium; this has been our one technological learning curve but both she and the students have been learning fast.  Lync is one of Microsoft's products so it is closely integrated into our email, Sharepoint and networ...

Our school has our teachers choose a working group that meets every third week of the school year; they choose a topic to look at and then work through a discussion, research and perhaps reach a project.  I had the opportunity to work through with a group today looking at how teacher reflection can promote and strengthen pedagogical change. Although we use OneNote in our classrooms, I encourage teachers when they're looking at collecting research and tracking progress to consider Evernote .  For one, it separates the information flow that surrounds the classroom in OneNote from the personal & professional space that things like this research project comprises.  Second, Evernote is an all-around excellent tool for capturing information especially in a case like this where the teachers want to capture instances where students have said or done something that indicates their pedagogical change has had an effect or been noticed. Your Evernote account has an email ad...

Well, I've nudged some middle managers forward. While OneNote is the major collaborative space that we use here at School, it's not the most comfortable working environment for folks groomed on Word, Excel and Powerpoint. We have in the past used GoogleDocs for the collaborative building of projects but many people are uncomfortable with the simultaneity of editing.  The regular Microsoft Office programs do allow for asyncrhonous sharing of documents when tied with Sharepoint.   So I passed on the following bit of knowledge to a few of our managers who are working on a couple of projects: Go to a Document Library on one of your Sharepoint Sites In the Documents ribbon at the top of the screen you have a New Document button.  It comes with Word and we can add Excel, Powerpoint and other common programs.  Let's say we click on Word... It opens up Word on the tablet and you can write your document. When you finally hit Save (or Exit) you are encourage...

Well I've spent a considerable amount of time responding to the feedback on Wallwisher; the students have definitely found it convenient to have a space to voice their concerns.  While I began it as place to talk about improvements to our OneNote Binder system, the students definitely did not feel limited to that initial suggestion.  At all.  Questions ranged from OneNote, to Outlook, to Windows 8 and then into the history of OneNote.  And a few diversions into internet memes.  Okay, I put my share of wood on that fire in my responses. And I thought it important to respond to each note -- they were asking legitimate questions, good questions, that they either hadn't heard the answer to yet (and for sure IT has been sending a consistent message on many of their issues) or we weren't even aware of the problem. I have to say that Padlet provided a great space for this... as moderator I could edit notes to add my comments and group notes around similar themes as ...

I have, of course, been an avid user of technology since I left the crib (much to my mother's chagrin) so I've experimented with a lot of things for a long period of time.  Working with our Upper School Director on an brainstorming activity, I introduced him to Wallwisher .  Now, Wallwisher (and others of its ilk) have been around a long time and in fact, Wallwisher has just undergone some serious improvements in usability and design.  For starters, it's now called Padlet . He didn't want to rush in to folks using it without having experienced it before his project so I sent out a link to Faculty asking for feedback on our OneNote Binder system as we plan for summer upgrades.  I set the board up to be a private link (so unless you have the link you can't find the board) and unmoderated (people can put up anything on the board and have it seen instantly by others). I also sent around to students another Wallwisher board asking for similar feedback.  I used ...