Connections to start 2017

The last two weeks have been all about connections for me. Connecting with other educators from around the world, being back at Haeata and connecting with staff and whanau.

Two weeks ago I opened my work email to find one from Anne Taylor, our NZ Microsoft Schools Manager, telling me I had been selected to go to Toronto to the amazing Microsoft Educator E2 Exchange. I spent the next 5 minutes in tears and absolutely speechless. It took me quite a bit of time to actually be able to call my mother and speak clearly to her to tell her. I was so blown away and had no idea it was coming so it was quite a shock.
My next call was to my school to check they were happy to give me leave to go. It means a week away which is quite a lot of time, but Microsoft are paying for the trip which is just fantastic and Haeata is very supportive which I am so thankful for. I then spent quite a bit of time reading and rereading all the emails that came in with information. I looked around websites and checked in to our new Yammer group for the New Zealand MIEExperts that are going. There are 7 of us and I can hardly wait to meet everyone. It certainly is taking some time to sink in and even two weeks later I keep having to remind myself that I am leaving in less than 8 weeks! My next step was to sort out the lesson I will present in Toronto. I only had a few online and I really wanted to do something with StaffPad and my SurfacePro so I decided to put another one together using videos I have on my YouTube channel - Music Sue. It is certainly a draft at the moment, but I can do more as time goes on. I love using my SurfacePro for teaching music (everything actually!) and it really does make a difference to what I do.
I made the decision I would put my name down to sit the Microsoft Certified Educator exam while I am over there. Bit scared - I don't like exams - but keen to give it a go. I have already finished the Teaching with Technology course on the Educator Community which will help with preparation for this, but I'll run through it again to make sure I'm up to it! The connections I have made through being an Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert have been amazing and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more and be part of a great community.

I spent quite a bit of time in school getting the music equipment sorted out and in some semblance of order over the last couple of weeks. There was a lot of equipment from the closing schools and it arrived in boxes so needed unpacking and sorting through. Being back at Haeata and now in our new buildings is amazing. Connecting with the space is important and I felt that week gave me time to work out how I was feeling about our new kura and the wonderful people that work there.

On Monday we had our support staff join us at Haeata. It was great to have all of our staff together for the first time and wonderful to make connections with those we haven't seen for a while, as well as our newbies. In the afternoon we went to Tuahiwi Marae. This amazing photo was taken by Clark Williams,
one of our kaiako, and I feel it sums up the great atmosphere out there. Making connections with the history of the area and our staff was very special. We were treated to some amazing workshops about the history of the area and Ngāi Tahu as well as tikanga māori. Our dinner was provided and we had a wonderful overnight stay sleeping in the marae together - luckily without too many people snoring! I went for a walk in the morning around Tuahiwi township and felt really connected to the area. It reminded me of my hometown of Darfield, a small country town where everyone knew everyone. It brought back a lot of memories and made more connections to my past. I found this article while looking for something about Darfield to link here. I must have missed it when it was published so it made interesting reading about my hometown. There were certainly less people out there when I lived there. After some more workshops in the morning we went for a trip out to Kaiapoi Pā and learnt more about the history of this area. I felt quite a strong connection here with what had happened and I found the information that Corban Te Aika gave us really interesting.

The rest of the week was about making connections with the Haeata whānau. Our hāpori met frequently and planned our Orientation time for ākonga as well as working on our four main ongoing areas of Learning Design, Relationships, NCEA, and Time and Space. Our Learning support and Admin staff joined us this week so making connections with them was a priority and we are looking forward to working with them as well. We made connections with a lot of our ākonga during the week. Many came in for Volleyball practice as well as for enrolments and uniform fittings. It was great to have them on site.

An exciting couple of weeks. New plans, new beginnings and excitement have kept me on my toes. I have more waiata and haka to learn before our powhiri next week and more planning to finish. Can hardly wait for our ākonga to turn up next Friday. Looking forward to it.

Moving Schools

Ah, the joy of moving schools. So many things to tidy up and sort, so little time to do so. After a very hectic Term Three, I finally had some time these holidays to pack up and get ready to move on to my new school, Haeata Community Campus.

So, clearing out things and digitally sorting things meant I found out all sorts of interesting facts which I thought I would share. I didn't want others to go through the same difficulties and some of the ideas might allow you to prepare yourselves early if you are thinking of leaving.

I started by tidying up my desk and my corner in the office.
I was amazed how little I took away with me. I remember in previous schools having large amounts of books and folders to take with me, but now almost all that I do is online and I only took a couple of bags of my books away with me. I was stunned. There was also very little rubbish - I got a recycle bin in, thinking that I was going to fill it with junk but really only had a small pile of paper to throw away.
But wait - the digital me, that is a different story. Where to start...
Making sure someone has the passwords to the sites I used for school. Changing the Admins on the Facebook pages. Making a list of all those subscriptions I have under my school address and changing them all over. I now have a gmail account for all those in future - I call it my Music Sue account so I can subscribe to lists, still get all the information, but don't have to change everything if I move schools again. This goes for my Microsoft Educator account, my TKI lists - everything to do with work. I had already made sure Twitter and my blog were on a different account, but I should have made this extra one a long time ago! It also gave me an email to give to staff to keep in touch, rather than giving my personal one, or my new school one (which I didn't know at the time).I also use it for my Youtube channel, putting up music instruction videos that I make using StaffPad.

 Reminder: Make a "work" email to use for subscriptions.

I had great difficulty trying to copy files from my OneDrive when they were not synced to my computer due to syncing problems with the Surface Pro4. I got around this by using a different computer and syncing that so I could just drag them onto an external hard drive. Also, huge problems with the new Sharepoint - FINALLY (and I mean hours) worked out I had to be in Internet Eplorer to enable the "Open in Explorer" button to work (which was one fix I found) then found out you can't download more than one file at a time anyway! Grrrr - spent a good few hours downloading files that I had put up to share with others and not saved elsewhere. **Update - just managed to move my Sways to another account - get the shareable link, then open in your new account and duplicate. Phew :) But it has also made me realise how easy it is to use someone else's Sway. More thought required about using Sway.

Reminder:  Don't save just in Sharepoint.

Oh, the next school is a Google school so that won't be an issue there, but down the track I hope Microsoft sorts that!
Exporting OneNotes worked well - easy to transfer sections, and whole notebooks. Love OneNote - have I mentioned that before?

Plants - I had a real dilemma about whether to take my pot plants or not - I don't have room for them at home and my new school is not built yet so I decided to leave them. I hope someone waters them.

The first few days of the holidays I spent doing marking (students handing in work on the last day of term!!), helping set up the teacher trainee who is taking my classes so she knew what to do for the four weeks of seniors in Term 4, and helping run the auditions for the Shcool of Music for 2017. Still doing what I called a brain download - trying to make sure that all the information I know is transferred across. Difficult when you are in charge of an area. I had started to write "how to" sheets, but never managed to do all of them.

Reminder: Make "how to" sheets wherever possible - for everything!

The last week of term was full of farewells, made a little tricky as I was away for a few days - although it seemed to make it easier for the staff and students to plan evil things for me! Reminder - do not go away for a few days in the week you leave a school.
The staff meeting on Wednesday morning was lovely, some awesome words spoken and nearly a tear shed - tried hard to keep it all together! The Performing Arts staff gave me a lovely bottle of whisky which I am keen to crack open with one or two of them around to help me. From the Hagley staff I got a beautiful pounamu bracelet and earrings. A lovely gift and something I will cherish as I move on.
That evening was our music showcase concert. I had an inkling that something might happen as one of my groups was last on the programme, which was unusual. It was a real pleasure to conduct the Junior Jazz Band for the last time and I was so proud of all the students over the evening. A few of the students gave me some really heartfelt words and the tears welled when the audience gave me a standing ovation in the middle of the evening. So, the final item came, my group sang but they didn't leave the stage. Sure enough, the planning had been done - Nanako Sato, a most amazing music teacher, had written a version of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious for the students to sing and play for me. They'd been rehearsing all week - easy, since I was away! I was blown away and the flowers and gifts were amazing. It was a really special evening.

Reminder: Do not go away the week you are leaving.

Then I had drinks after school on Thursday where a few of my dearest and finest colleagues gathered and we had a good chat. Many of my students gave me gifts and the wine, flowers, chocolates and my blue teddy are all amazing. On the final day I was called out of class to "shift my car", only to find it covered in Gladwrap with beautiful messages all over it. The boys were close by filming my reaction and gleefully posted it on Facebook. Lucky I just smiled at them....
The cards and gifts were overwhelming and I really felt quite emotional all week. Part of me so excited about my new job, part of me sad to leave such amazing students and staff.

My holidays are full of two things:
My teacher side: professional reading, learning more Google Apps, writing blogs, learning to use my new Mac, Tweeting, and sorting my digital self so I can find things easily.
My personal side: spending time with my children, painting a bathroom and gardening for my mother, gardening for me, reading and getting the pool ready for swimming.

 I'm excited about my new job and look forward to learning new things. Bring it on.

Microsoft Tips

As an MIE Expert I am lucky to attend some amazing sessisons with other MIEs and with Microsoft staff. We had a Microsoft Teacher Talk in Christchurch where we were given an overview of Microsoft products and the chance to throw some ideas around.
Having used most of these products for a while, I didn't take copious amounts of notes, but as always there were a few tips that I found really useful and wanted to share with others, so here they are.

OneNote - I use this all the time, but am always learning something new.

• You can pull text out of an image by right clicking on the image and right at the bottom there is "Select Text from Image". I didn't see it there when I had the Onetastic addin disabled, so you may need to download and enable it to have this option.
• Use the Learning Tools Dictate feature to scribe audio from a video. Run the video on YouTube while recording and it will write the text for you.
• If you right click an image and "Set Picture as Background" you can annotate it without it moving around.
• Don't forget to use the Audio recording for feedback. You can annotate at the same time and it links the audio to the annotations. If you are having problems with work on multiple pages, go to File>Options>Advanced>Printout and untick the "Printouts on Multiple Pages" box.
• Remind students to copy their written work before they highlight or make changes, then you can see the progression.
• In the Class Notebook you can distribute sections and pages to a small group within your class.
• You can add a Teacher only section to an aleady made Class Notebook. Under Class Notebook go to Manage Notebooks, choose your note book and Enable Teacher-Only Section.
• Use OneNote for Teacher Appraisal.
• Only comment for improvement is it would be nice to have the full functionality of the Word spell check within OneNote.

OfficeMix - I haven't used this yet, but some of my colleagues have, with good success. Keen to have a closer look when I get some time.

• Download this  into Powerpoint - not available for Mac yet.
• If you write in the notes section of your Powerpoint, these will come up when you record, so you can read them while you record.
• If you want to take a small section of a video, you can do a Screen Record into your powerpoint, or you can right click and save it as a short clip for later use.
• When you upload to OfficeMix make sure you save the settings for students to sign in, then you will get analytics.

Snip   - I use this all the time, and love it!

• Download and have it sitting on the side or top of your screen for easy use.
• Use it to create little snips to explain short concepts.
• Great for annotation of screen clippings.
• Use the whiteboard to draw on then save.
• The library in Snip saves all your snips for quick access.

Sway - love this alternative for presentations

• Great for collaboration of Authors.
• You can share and enable students to duplicate your Sway so they can add to it. Share>More Options> Duplicate.
• Drag and drop photos in to make a quick newsletter for parents and community.
• Good for portfolios. Can show the before and after of art work with the slider.
• Use like a blog for a school trip, share with parents so they can keep updated.
• You can use this offline, download the app from the store.
• It is Mac friendly, but one teacher mentioned that students couldn't edit on their phones.

Classroom and Teacher Dashboard - a quick discussion was had about both of these, although no-one was using in any depth. Definitely in the beta stage where we are experimenting and seeing what works. It was good to hear that Microsoft have been working with KAMAR to get these linked together.

Tasks - This looks good to use when planning a group event such as Prizegiving or a production. Good to be able to allocate tasks to staff. It would be good to be able to allocate tasks to more than one person.

Forms - I have done a couple of surveys and quizzes using Forms - so far so good.

• You can now add points to questions.
• You can turn the link into a QR code which I like.
• Great for surveying the community.
• Good visuals - yu can see it updating if you do it live.
• You can export as a spreadsheet.
• You can delete a particular student response, if you have set the survey for students to sign in.
• A few things that are still needed - the ability to co-author, to duplicate and to stop people voting more than once.

Educator Community - I have learnt so much on this site!

• Plenty of Courses and Resources.
• Loving the new layout and look.
• The 21st Century Learning Design Pathway comes with it's own OneNote which has rubrics to code your activities to see how well you are using tehnology.
• There are webinars to watch.
• It's a good idea to use your home email to sign up, this makes it easier if you change schools. 

I ran a quick session on using StaffPad - an amazing app for SurfacePro that is a great tool for teaching music. 

Overall, a great session and I have a few more tips and tricks to add to my bag. I am keen to give OfficeMix a go - that will be a holiday project.

Surface Pro 4

I've been waiting...

Ever since I found out I had been selected to be a Microsoft Innovative Educator Surface Expert, I have been very excited about getting a Surface Pro 4 to play with.

It arrived today.
I had primed our wonderful receptionist to let me know as soon as it arrived at school and she called me at lunchtime today. So excited!

Luckily I had some time this afternoon to unpack the amazing box of goodies. Not only was there my new Surface Pro 4 and stylus, but a whole lot of extras:
A useful "how to use your kit" instruction sheet - I'll be working through this!

• Digital inking display board
• Brochures, posters and information sheets on the Surface Pro, as well as Think in Ink stickers. The posters also let you advertise workshops for Surface Pro.
• A lovely sticker for my Surface that says I am an MIE Surface Expert for 2016 - very nice :)
• Wireless Display Adapter - already using one of these, so it will be great to have another in my second classroom - save moving it from one place to another all the time! (Now all I need is another in my 3rd classroom and I'm all sorted).
• USB bracelet - great idea, unfortunately it's a bit big for me - It slips on and off my hand without undoing it, so maybe it will be on my desk not my wrist :( Need small wrist size ones as this is unfortunately not adjustable)
• A nice bright red keyboard - might take me a bit to get used to the colour but it's kind of cool.
• A Brenthaven BX2 Edge case. I tried attaching the pen by the string they sent but decided against it, but good to have that option, especially for students who lose things! I notice that this case is not available on the NZ Microsoft store yet, so it's fun to trial something you can't get here! My only comment at the moment is that the pen is on the wrong side! I have to take it off with my left hand - great for the left-handers out there though.

So... I managed to get some of my school accounts sorted - got Office365 up and running, downloading the awesome free software onto my Surface Pro 4 so I can do work while offline - this is a real bonus. The one thing I noticed in even in the first few minutes of use, was the keyboard, trackpad and stylus were a lot better than the Surface Pro 3. Really looking forward to using this.

Managed to lock myself out while trying to get my kids to see if Windows Hello would recognise their faces instead of mine! Took a fair bit of stress sorting that out as it kept asking for my PIN but had no way of entering it. Finally I pressed the Power and the up volume together - with the intention of doing a forced shutdown, but as soon as I touched both a screen appeared for me to put my PIN in - whew!

Next steps are to get used to the new stylus - I'm not sure about having the eraser at the top, I'll have to see how that goes.

Must install my OneNote Learning Tools and Staffpad tonight and hopefully get the rest up and running tomorrow.

I am also going to invest in a Bluetooth mouse - I find a mouse useful in a lot of situations, but don't want to lose the USB port. Thinking about adding more memory via card as well - will wait and see what I need once I am all set to go. Most of my work is online, but video and audio files for my music teaching takes a lot of space.

Lots to do - more blogging will have to wait.

My journey over time - Part 1 - Technology

I have been thinking about how my teaching has changed, and how things are so different now from when I started teaching in 1988. 27 years later and classrooms look very different. I thought I'd take a few aspects and reflect on how things have changed for me and my students.

Part One - Technology
My start at Teacher's College included learning to use tape decks and Gestetner machines, and although I was well versed in Music technology, there was very little computing happening in schools. My first school had an Apple IIe which we had in the Music office and I learnt to use Finale - a powerful piece of music software at the time. Jump forward to now and I am using Staff Pad on a Surface Pro.

Students rarely had access to computers at home and we certainly didn't use them in the classroom. Research was done in the library and through textbooks we scrimped and saved our budgets for. At my second school in the 90s we had a computer to do audio recordings on, as well as the office computer, but nothing in the classroom.

After a break in my teaching in schools to lecture at Uni, I came back to a high school just getting a brand new department, where I had the opportunity to have a computer lab. I managed to get a grant to fill this lab with Macs and have our own server so we could keep large files. Running Garageband and Sibelius and Practica Musica, this covered a good range of activities and we used the lab frequently with all classes. This then extended to a Recording studio and yet another Mac. Students were starting to get the hang of working with computers for music, although the majority in this low decile school did not have them at home. Any other work done on them was around research and typing, with very little else. Students saved work on the server and occasionally a pen drive was seen.

Another short break to lecture at Uni and then I arrived in the school I am in now. Here is a whole different ball game. I have learnt so much about technology and e-learning and change that I am excited about where things will lead us. Having slowly moved away from teaching Music and more into the Technology sphere, I realise how much more we can do. Students have BYOD, we store things in the Cloud, we communicate with students via Facebook and Twitter, and there are so many ways to collaborate and expand our minds. My goal has been to transform my teaching with technology and I have to acknowledge Andy Gorton, who is our Director of ICT, without whom I wouldn't have had my eyes opened anywhere near as far.
The SAMR model is one I have been looking at and making sure I redefine the technology in order to transform my teaching.

I read a great article yesterday titled "Three Ways to Improve Technology Assisted Learning" where it talks about mindset before resources. I believe many staff struggle with getting away from anything but substitution because their mindset is still at that level. I always used the "f" word in my teaching - Flexibility - and that goes for technology as well. Thinking outside the square, and outside the circle, just think outside and be flexible - students can teach us so much.

We have looked at Augmented Reality and I have played with Aurasma  which I would love to do more with. I have been designing Digital Badges which I believe are going to only get bigger and more important as we increase our digital skills. What's next?

So many amazing things are being done in classes - I am loving learning.