MIE Expert April call

I'm running a bit behind in writing up my notes for this call. Work seemed to take over in the last week or two and I haven't seemed to have the time, or just not felt like it!
Even though this is a Microsoft group, many of the resources and information are definitely relevant for those that are not Office365 kura. At my kura we have both Google and Office365, although not all of Office365 is available so we don't use Teams. I still use Excel, Powerpoint and Word more if I can - opting to sometimes copy and past into GoogleDocs after doing what I need to in Word. I also much prefer Powerpoint to Slides - the possibilities are definitely better in Powerpoint. I do miss being in a Microsoft school - especially at this time when I would have a OneNote all set up with work and Sharepoint all sorted, then working in Teams *sigh. Ah well.
These are my notes from the calls we had a couple of weeks ago.
The first thing I really liked was that there was a call buddy. While the presenters did their thing someone else was nominated to follow the questions in the chat, rather than the presenter having to do that as well. Great idea and really useful! A couple of links first:
Remote Learning with Minecraft
How to set up Virtual Breakout Rooms in Microsoft Teams

Learning From home - Nikkie Laing - Opaheke School (Yr1-8)
They have 1;1 in yr 5-8 so already capacity there. Teams was in place for staff communication and they had One Note for some. They managed to get all their devices out before school closed along with some paper packs. They are not doing new resources or new software and they spent the two days before lockdown upskilling staff in Teams.
Online learning for two days and they realised they had planned too much - they did it the way they used to operate but now there wasn't teacher support which made it different. Parents can't always support the way we think they can.
There was much discussion about some students drowning in work that they felt had to be done. It was reinforced that we have to be kind. Not only to one another but to our students.
Need to identify common goals:
consistency for parents
Streamlined curriculum
Options
Shared understandings for teacher, parents and students and need a Learning from Home portal
Checkin with parents by email or phone and refer back to the school website all the time
Checkin with teachers through teams but also 1 on 1 as well
Education Perfect - too much work Online lessons are overwhelming and teachers are shattered but students are more shattered. EP can have so much work in one lesson.
Notices each day - have dressups for fun. No pressure for people to be there.
Requires staff to be collaborative
We all liked Nikkie's infographics so much she agreed to do a separate session on how to make them - see later in this blog!

Powerpoint recordings - Rachel Chisnall
Use the zoom feature in PPT - nice feature for delivery
Relationships matter
What to maintain:
prior knowledge
what they are doing at home
within school structure
Think about who you are trying to reach
Plain sincere recording is better than all the bells and whistles
Be there for your students, don't try to make it perfect
Say something 100 times - it may be the first time they actually hear it
If putting a video in - cut a square out of the corner for your camera
Keep yourself safe - think about the background, what you are wearing, a solo space and prop up your laptop. It's Ok if family are in the background - we are only human if they walk past. Need that human connection
Keep videos short - 6-8 mins max. Think about the student experience as if you were watching it. Save it, then record on a copy of it
Recording bar:
Screen recording useful for small sections of YouTube clips
Forms can add an option to fill out at the end
Best if you have a dedicated mic rather than a computer mic - or you get the noise of keys typing
Once done, think about access. You can save as a video and add to a YouTube channel or add to stream in Office 365 or into OneNote. Export as an mp4 then use YouTube for less bandwidth
Examples of uses:
Introduction videos
Exam walkthroughs - different colours for A,M,E
Student feedback - can talk directly as feedback - put a picture into PPT and talk over.
Watch your language - Must/Could/Should - some are unable to do work and feel guilty
Weekly planner idea - see pic

Wellbeing in a crisis: Carmen Kenton 
crisis education not home schooling
Crisis education research
Homeschooling is very social but this isn't
Maslow's heirachy of needs
We need to share resources as well as have equity of access
Need to increase wellbeing - don't recreate what is happening in the classroom
Asynchronous learning - can they connect at a different time when you are not available? Can't always do it at the time you set.
Give choices - it gives them control in a time that is uncontrollable.
Carmen very kindly has offered her PPT for anyone  - it has great links and ideas.
More links:
Click happy photography competition
Online schooling vs remote learning
Survey staff and students to find out how they are finding things
Use TikTok as an editing tool - good at quick snippets
Juggling needs of high needs academic and lower ability - hard to do all.
Some students just want the stability of school
Need engagement of parents too - hard to get in touch. For some people, school is the safe space

Infographics - Nikki Laing 
https://www.showeet.com/ - spend some time here and just download lots of them
Good to get a message across - focus you to be precise
To turn background stuff off just R click - format background and hide background graphics
Pip Cleaves talks about branding
Adobe color
Extract theme - drop image of school banner and it extracts the colours.  et to bright/muted then it shows RGB and Hex codes on the colour wheel. Need these numbers
Go back to PPT - Design-Colours-own colour bar and create new theme. Can put more colours and put RGB in to use school colours
Works in Word as well - Design- colours
Adobe Color will extract the gradient as well - can use that too
Canva is another option - free Pro licence for teachers. Can use Hex codes in here as well

Noun Project - icons to use
Paint.net - free paint programme that can take background out - can also do in Canva

New Office 365 Apps

My waffle menu has been filling up recently with new Apps for Office 365. It sometimes is hard to keep up and I'm not sure what some of them are for, but I've been delving (intended pun) into a few recently to see how they work and what I might use them for.

Delve

Firstly, Delve has been improved. I used this a lot before, when I kept losing documents, but now it has even more features that I am loving. The search feature is still there but being able to look up documents from a specific person is really helpful and it is great now that I can have favourite documents, not just boards. This is so helpful if you are working on a document frequently and want to have quick access to it. If you haven't been into Delve, I suggest you start now!

Soundtrap

As a music teacher this one particularly interested me. We are looking to change from Mac to PC soon and our main composition tool has been Garageband for a long time. I have been looking at Soundtrap as an alternative to see if it would cover what we need.
Things I like about it:
It's easy to use. The interface is clean and simple and I think junior students would find it really easy.
It's online - no more losing files on laptops. You don't have to be an Office365 user to connect.
It's collaborative. You can join up with someone on the other side of the world and write a piece of music together.
It has Soundtrap for Education which gives access to all the Premium features as well as specific education features such as creating groups and classes - see pic.
Things that I'd like to see improved:
I'd like to be able to save it somewhere else, as well as in Soundtrap - I'm sure there will be a limit on space eventually.
In order for it to be used with our senior students we would need to transfer it over to a DAW to focus on more in depth editing tools. This means I would want it to be able to export MIDI or .wav files to take into a program such as Logic Pro.
The other thing is to get our heads out of Garageband and see the new opportunities this will create. I can see huge potential here with students being able to access this from home (as long as they have internet - and yes, some don't) and also the collaboration feature. Here is a review from another teacher, extolling the same virtues. I love it.

Classroom 

I am having a play with this at the moment. Due to the fact that we are halfway through our school year, it is a bit hard to change over to this when everything is already set up in my classes. In particular, we have OneNote already set up with our classes and starting a new one is just too much work at this stage. That is unfortunate because this OneNote has a Teacher Only Section!!!! Yes, a section for me to put my notes in about the class. I love it!
It's almost worth moving everything across...
Another staff member and I have been playing and have created a class for each of us to play in as both student and teacher.  We have been sending messages and creating assignments, as well as working out where things come and go to. Love the ability to send a private message to a student within the classroom.
Some of the things I'd like to change would be the conversation thread adds to the bottom, not the top and also being able to email the whole class that the Classroom has been activated. I suppose this could be done via a message. Still more to play with, but I can see the positives and look forward to using this.

Power BI

What a great tool for the mad statistical geeks among us. Such a great way to collect and present data. I used this to write up my Department report at the end of last year and found it easy to use and really useful in presenting the data I needed. I know that it can do a lot more than I used it for, and as a
mathematician, I get very excited by data, so I'm keen to spend more time on this to get the most out of the tool and use the data to improve learning. The graphs look pretty too! (I have left off the title and x-axis names in this graph as they identify students).

Flow 

I have just got my hands on this and have already created a flow for my email attachments to go straight to a folder in my One Drive. It's great being able to link up some of my other accounts as well and am looking at some of the possibilities to do with my Twitter Account. There are lots of templates to choose from and I am sure as I browse these I will find more flows that will save time from some of those annoying tasks! Check out this review. You do need a work Office 365 account to login and try it out.

Planner 

The latest addition that I am hoping to get my hands on soon. I can see this being a really great tool for those that work in teams. Being able to create tasks, allocate staff to them and move them through phases of completion is great. I can see it being used for my students working in groups and looking at good project management skills. Looking forward to having a play.


I think the biggest problem at the moment is the time to look at all of these, and to work out what is best for what I want to do. It is easy to be overwhelmed with technology so I have had to take a step back, look at the big picture, and see how these tools can save me time and work in the best way for my students. I'll be picking a few bits out of each and making the most of them.

OneNote Learning Tools

My experience of these learning tools after a few weeks has been amazing. I wish I had this support for students many years ago. I can see these just getting better and better and have found the Microsoft team really proactive in replying to feedback and wanting to improve their product (no, I don't work for Microsoft...).

I was very excited when they first turned up and immediately started using them with individual students.
The first student I worked with is a visually impaired student in my class. He carries a magnifying glass with him and uses it to read documents on his laptop. I helped him to download the Learning Tools addin and showed him how to magnify the text in his OneNote for our class. He has found this to be a fantastic tool and it has meant he can read the handouts and collaborative work easily and quickly without having to magnify every word .

Another student in my class has dyslexia and uses a lot of spoken commands wherever he can. Being able to have the example and the handouts read out to him has meant a lot. He is keen to get this feature on the phone app as well. He says it would be great to scan something with OfficeLens while he is out and about, then have the OneNote Learning Tools read it for him while he follows the text. I know this is something OneNote is keen to implement - we can't wait!

Another girl I have in Year 11 (age 15) cannot read. She is now using OfficeLens and OneNote to enable her to access the work from all subjects at school. Rather than teachers having to read work to her, she now is becoming independent by scanning the handouts herself in OfficeLens and then using the Learning Tools to read for her.

I love the way it becomes full screen in the immersive reading mode so that there are no other distractions apart from the text. This is huge for many of our students.

I have been working with our Learning Support Department to start to implement these tools so they can help students. Initial feedback is excellent, with staff keen to learn to use OneNote so that in the future they can start using these tools.

Things I think need to happen before we can really roll this out over the school:
It needs to work online. Many of our students do not have their own devices and so online is their only option.
Would love it for iOS so all students can access it.
I would like dictation to work on more than just Windows10. Not everyone is up to date yet.
As students have said, they are keen to also have it on their phones, so they can use them anytime, anywhere.

Links to excellent articles/resources:
Office Blog
Technet Blog
And the most important, the Suggestion Box for OneNote. I only found this in the last week. It's  a great idea and I will be making more suggestions either through here or on the Feedback tabs in the addins.

Looking forward to using this more and more.

Beginning of 2016

I'm excited. After becoming a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert last year, I have now been given the title of MIE Surface Expert. I love my Surface Pro 3 and am even more excited to be getting a SurfacePro 4 as part of this programme. Looking forward to it!
Thanks to Kurt Soeser for providing the header - it is much appreciated and looks great!

The beginning of the year has been mad. I have been meaning to blog for ages, but all of the setting up and prep has meant that I have had little time to just sit and write.

Enrolment
We have 2 days of enrolling new students at our school and I really enjoy these days as an enroller. I get to meet new students and work on getting a good programme together for them.

School of Apps
We have 11 students this year and they have started the year well. Very keen and motivated, and even with all the admin in the first few days, they are writing apps already. I am also loving the OneNote Learning Tools. These are fantastic for a few of my students in here. One has some sight issues so the large print is fantastic and a couple are dyslexic. How amazing to be able to cater for them with such great tools.

Professional Development
I am really keen to help staff this year and have set up sessions to instruct and support staff on a range of topics. Carmen Kenton and Andy Gorton are great support in this and Carmen and I will enjoy our lunchtime duty in the Computer lab where we can help staff and students. For my own development I intend to spend quite a few hours each week working on increasing my knowledge of Office365 and in particular OneNote.

Year 11 Music
I am looking forward to teaching this class, as it has been a while since I had this year level. Using OneNote for all their work and looking at how I can incorporate a lot of technology in the class is the challenge. It is a large class and has a wide range of abilities. I am keen to use StaffPad for all the music notation instruction so I have work to do on this as well.

Badges
Really keen to get these up and running. Just sorting the graphics and we can get started. It will be good to get them out to students this year and see how they will work.

Along with organising Itinerant Music lessons, School of Music classes, MIE Expert info and reading, keeping up with Twitter, and my own life/work balance it will be a busy year.

Bring it on.

Using OneNote in the Classroom

My inquiry project for school this year was about using OneNote in the classroom. This is a short summary of what I did and how it worked out. My focus question was:

Does OneNote help students with organisation, note taking and collaboration?

I noticed that students often lose paper, have left notes at home or say they cannot find or access documents. For the School of Apps this year I set up a OneNote classroom notebook and wanted to see if this was a better way for students to be organised and also collaborate together.

I used this as the sole resource document for the class and was trying to have no paper resources where possible. All their resources and their written work was done within the notebook.

I also trialed this in the School of Music, although I was only in there part time.
See my blog on Schools within Schools for how these schools are set up.

My Findings:

I kept a track on how students used the OneNote and what they were using it for as well as putting in resources for them to use.

I surveyed the students from both classes to get feedback on how they found it and what worked well for them over the year. I spoke with students about if they felt it was useful and if they thought it helped with collaboration.

School of Apps:

We used OneNote exclusively as our resource base and also for all collaborative work, and for the students work. From the beginning of the year students were told all their work would be in that one place and that they would use this exclusively. This was for the full 20 hours a week that they were in class.

I found it worked really well in this class. Students were focussed and positive about it and some are now using it for their own personal notes and organisation.

Positives:

•              It gave me a central area to store resources for students. This included video, links, audio – anything I wanted to put there.
•              They had a space to organise work and also to collaborate with each other.
•              I was able to see work they had done at any time and it wouldn’t get lost.
•              I could see what they were doing in English and Business Studies as well – giving an overview of all their subjects, not just technology.
•              Students enjoyed seeing what others were thinking about and what resources they had found and were sharing. They all felt it helped them work productively together.
•              They said it was easy to keep organised titled pages and easy to find. All of them felt it made a difference in the organisation of their schoolwork.

Negatives:

•              Sometimes they felt it was frustrating to navigate, but that it got easier as the year went on.
•              One student felt it needed a better offline version.

School of Music Yr 12 and Yr 13:

My main use for OneNote in Music was for supplying students with links and resources for music theory. Everything I gave them to do was linked into OneNote and all the flash cards and theory sheets were there as well. Answer sheets were loaded on to save on paper and to give them 24hr access.

 I found that OneNote was great in some aspects but not in others within these classes. Some students used it and others didn’t bother. Many just used GoogleDocs and were not motivated to check the theory notes online. Those that used Google Docs said they found it difficult to navigate, while those that just used OneNote said they found it easy and they enjoyed using it. Because I wasn’t using it as frequently with them, and other staff weren’t using it either, I think that they weren’t as used to it as my Apps class were.

Positives:

•             It gave me a central area to store resources for students. This included video, links, audio – anything I wanted to put there.
•             They had a space to organise work and also to collaborate with each other.
•             I was able to see work they had done at any time and it wouldn’t get lost.
•             I could see what they were doing in English and History as well – giving an overview of all their subjects, not just Music.

Negatives:

•       Getting students to write music notation was best done by hand, so resources had to be printed out, although I put most docs online so they could access them if they lost them.
•       Some of the students used the collaborative area in English but said that students were sometimes making silly comments. This would need to be monitored by staff to enable this to work well.
•       A couple of students said they lost work which I found interesting as I haven’t had that happen to me, or to students in the Apps class. I’m not sure that students had a full working knowledge of the application.  
•       I don’t think it will fully work unless other staff use it for all their notes and assignments. If the School of Music is going to go this way, then all staff have to be on board.

Where to from here?

The students who used it frequently and embraced it got a lot from it. It definitely worked in the School of Apps and I will be using the same format for 2016. I will continue to use these with any class I teach and look forward to using it in a different Music class next year to see if it works for all areas of Music, not just theory. I want to use it for reflection of their performances and compositions and also look at other online ways of storing data for students.
I am absolutely certain it helped the Apps students with organisation, note taking and collaboration and believe it could also work in the Music class if more staff were on board.

Using Office365 and OneNote in particular is something I believe we should be using in all classes and with all teachers. Using the student’s school email, using OneDrive to store work, using OneNote for classes and getting students to use all the amazing apps (Video, Sway etc) in Office365 would be great. I am starting this process next week by providing our department with PD in using OneNote so they can all get on board for next year. I am also planning to run PD sessions each week next year to support staff and students.