DFI part nine. The super serious one. Well, a little bit serious.

All right, time to get serious. I thought that after eight weeks of writing a sometimes tongue in cheek and occasionally profane overlong stream-of consciousness reflections on the day and the week (professionally) it is time to bite down on my mouthguard, step forward and write something ‘teachery’. I apologise for the tonal shift, knowing it didn’t work so well in the ‘DFI part 7 Meme This’ post. I'm not sure whether the whole 'unreliable narrator' style I adopted for my cyberstupidity post worked so well either. Like an omelette, it's easy to overdo and it ends up a bit dry.

We all know that in our profession, when choosing words and terms for our academic we have our own jargon which we create our own meanings for. And if faced between a choice of fairly simple language or difficult abstract language we go for the complex every time. With that short intro, I give you my teachery paragraph reflection on the DFI…

The DFI has the focus on key digital competencies with teacher-driven and developmentally appropriate emphasis on the google suite. With a collegial atmosphere, the DFI was both learning intensive (as per the name) and bridged cognitive and affective domains. Within the new paradigm (learn, create, share) and for our 21st Century learners we took a ‘deep dive’ across a number of different modal structures, attempting to synergise trans-disciplinarity. Technology-enhanced holistic learning can obviously act as a catalyst in any synergism. My inquiry-driven functionalities have included linking sheets, forms and docs. As the digital representative on staff, I have had to deliver learner-centered learning as staff development and although there has been some cognitive disequilibrium amongst pedagogues from a different iteration, it has, in the main, and through the experiential-based learning process, been impactful. In fact, as a point of convergence, proficiencies of major stakeholders have been enhanced and maximised in an expedited process with a range of modalities.

Actually, the beauty (and the curse) of using all these high-level abstractions is the ambiguity. Instead of asking,  ‘What does this mean?’ you should be asking, ‘What do I want this to mean?’

Back to my normal flippant tone.

I’ve also used the ‘synergy’ buzzword a couple of times. I used to be confused with this term and was told helpfully several times that it was ‘like the Rolling Stones’ as in the whole was more than a sum of the parts. I heard this several times from several people and have concluded that none of them know anything about the Rolling Stones, a band that has become synonymous with rock n’ roll. For starters, the Stones have put out some absolute rubbish - 1989’s Steel Wheels for example. 67’s Satanic Majesties was also a confused rip-off of the Beatles Sergeant Peppers psychedelic album. So they are not always great. And live shows can be a lottery given some members of the band overdo the dope. But their lineup has included some fantastic musicians. Keith Richards, the personification of drug use, is an extremely creative master of riff. Wyman, Watts, Jagger - all talented. Consider Mick Taylor, famously expelled from a band (that contains Keith Richards) for being too boozed and drugged. Ronnie Wood - also under-rated. Critically, their ‘Exile On Main Street’ album is the most acclaimed but my personal favourite is 1969’s Let it Bleed closely followed by 1971's Sticky Fingers. I'm reminded of Harrison Ford's Han Solo  character snarling 'the force doesn't work like that'. Nor does synergy. Don't compare synergy with the Rolling Stones! Slight diversion but hey. Synergy.

This is the album cover for Let It Bleed. You'd think it would be more appropriate for "Sticky Fingers" but I think they had something else in mind....

One of my fellow DFIers was not looking forward to writing this blog and suggested that instead of writing a large blog post just submit a couple of pictures because ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words.’ Whoever made that saying up was obviously not a massive book reading nerd like myself. Groucho Marx actually said it best: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read” although I’m pretty sure that last part was just a guess. Incidentally, Groucho is my favourite Marx - way funnier than Karl, whose writing about society, politics and religion isn’t funny at all. And Malcolm Marx doesn’t even write, but throws the ball very accurately into the South African lineout. Much like the rest of the South African forward pack, he resembles an angry lamp-post and, consequently, I’ll bet he never has to endure painful puns about being the ‘hooker’. Just thought I’d get in a rugby reference as the World Cup is about to kick off tomorrow.

This is Groucho. Karl has an enormous beard (a bit like Herman) and Malcolm, like I said, looks like a monster.

This final session has been mainly tied up with sitting an exam. Like some of the boys that I teach I prepared thoroughly by relaxing and having beers last night (and the night before) and was slightly disturbed when Ubby declared this morning that she’d watched all the google videos on the 'exam' channel we had all subscribed to. Those videos are about 45 minutes each and she’d spent something like 10 hours trawling through them the previous day. We’re marking exams at the moment and after marking a series of essays on ‘unfamiliar texts’ my brain kind of splutters like an old tractor and just gives up. (I can get through about six before my brain wanders off somewhere) So that was partly my excuse for not studying, the other was a false sense of confidence. Anyway, I felt that I’d benefited significantly from doing the DFI and the google qualification actually means very little to my colleagues and students. Very little is probably an exaggeration.

The exam was fairly time-consuming and I’d hoped to be finished really quickly. In fact I had kind of hoped there’d be some kind of marking schedule as I went so that as soon as I knew I’d passed, I could stop typing and have another coffee and a crack at all the nice food everyone brought in today. Sadly that did not happen. There was more google classroom stuff than I expected and the (fairly basic) questions on sheets were a stretch: lucky I had made a whole bunch of charts on the exams I have just marked and sent them around the rest of the department like a complete show-off. I managed to slog through the exam and gained a pass. 

If I were to list some of the benefits of the DFI, (and I will right here) they would include: google groups, indexing, learning around sites, sheets, forms and media. Being the student was fun and the group - friendly, helpful, studious- was a good mix: knowing what’s happening in the primary schools is a wake up in that they are doing some fairly fancy tech stuff and we need to be able to challenge and extend our students that are coming through. Some cohorts will be coming with real skill. However, some of the other benefits of the DFI are less tangible. Such as a sense of well-being I definitely didn't have this time last year as I've been able to spend each Friday around adults learning stuff.  We'll miss coming in early on a Friday and chatting about the new stuff we've tried. I'll miss my fellow DFIers. Anyway, I'm off for a beer. Thanks for reading.

DFI part 8 Watch out for the Purple Ninja

First, a bit of a reflection on last week's stuff. Short admission, I had come in thinking I was the digital Gus Fring at Boys High. But after the sheets' presentation last week, I felt like season one Jesse Pinkman.

Well, great times with all the new ‘learnings’ around google sheets from last week. Actually, the word ‘learnings’ makes me irascible for some reason. I’m good with learning as a word on its own. But put an ‘s’ on the end and it sounds plain wrong. Enough complaining. What I’m especially enthused about is the ability to make colourful graphs. I have been feverishly importing csv files downloaded from Education Perfect to google sheets and making all sorts of colourful graphs. Bars and lines in all directions. We all know the system: laboriously gather and input data from students. Senior managers ‘refine’ the data. Finally, the principal (or senior managers) present the data usually at a board of trustees meeting. And of course, that presentation is usually in the form of colourful graphs. I should know; I was on a BOT at a local primary school for three years and man, did I have to look at a shit-ton of colourful graphs. Happy days. Unfortunately,  my department (English) has not had much truck with colourful graphs although we reluctantly submit to a round of data analysis at the start of every year - forced by our resident data geek Darcy. The ‘Darce’ loves graphs more than I love beer - except I don’t try to cram my beer down anyone else’s throat. And if I did, I’m pretty sure it would be way more popular with my colleagues. Incidentally, the ‘Darce’ is also the name of a particularly nasty choke hold which is kind of relevant when you think of what happens to you existentially when looking at a great wodge of lines, numbers and graphs - especially when presented via slideshow. The only other data chart we (in the  English department) produce is the e-asttle reading comprehension individual pathway. It’s got a number of speedometer looking things (I don't know even know the proper name for them), a box and whisker looking thing and all sorts of colours and numbers. We give it to parents and students, most of whom are completely baffled by it as are most of the staff - who have to try and explain it to the same parents. Do I have a treat in store for my department. No longer do we have to sullenly stare at our feet while the Science or Maths guys carp on with some graphs in staff meetings, muttering ‘bullshit’ under our breath. It’s payback time. My lot are going to have graphs all over the show. Colours, lines, bars - all that fancy data stuff. It’s our turn to spread the stupefaction. You can prove anything with statistics: 73% of all teachers know that. Even the P.E. lot love fancy data analysis because they all watched ‘Moneyball’ and vaguely understand the premise.

We had our year nine undergo a writing analysis by the Write that Essay crew and it was great: they broke down the boys’ writing in terms of the length of the sentences, vocabulary and sentence variety and length overall. Whacked all that into some fancy graphs and you’ve got a visual representation of some major issues - which seems to be more significant for some people than just saying ‘hey, our students have major difficulty just writing a sentence’. Graphs provide statistical proof to any announcement - once again 73% of all teachers know this stuff. Frankly, I've always hated the fancy graphs thing, maybe because I couldn't do them and now that I can, everyone is going to wish for a poem, or maybe a filthy limerick at least. The obvious next step is to put all of those graphs or 'charts' into google slides. And present them. The modern presentation version of the medieval 'Judas Cradle'. Earlier this year, I had to attend a 'sense-making' session. The presenter was ruthless. Three hours and seventy odd slides. Lots of graphs. Famous for mumbling lyrics, Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder is actually one of the great vocalists of our time. And now I am convinced that when he sings 'make me cry' during my favourite Pearl Jam song: Yellow Ledbetter,  he's actually emoting about having to sit through a powerpoint presentation containing graphs. You can clearly hear him mumbling complaints about charts in the previous verse. Don't take my word for it. Just listen.

You don't need fancy graphs to be misleading though (or boring either). When talking about the DFI to a colleague I mentioned that we were writing blogs and I said I had between three and four hundred readers. Which obviously sounds way better than saying 'about eleven on a good week'. Well, eleven is between three and four hundred. But it's also between three and twelve... See, I can do maths too.

Parent-teacher evening on Wednesday night and I was ready. Flashing my new graphs like Crocodile Dundee's knife.

Well, that was quite the reflection on last week's stuff. Now for this week: Media. I love this topic and learned all sorts of stuff: youtube, slides. Presented by a bearded enthusiastic bloke called Matt from Auckland - he had all sorts of great stuff up his sleeve.

First though, Dorothy Burt launched into a presentation on being empowered. Empowered is the new jargon, she announced - it's a way better word than agency and not just because of the three extra letters. 'Agency' has bad connotations with some folks who have had to depend on different 'agencies' and probably haven't had much success. It's also a way better word than 'ubiquitous' but nowhere near as flash as 'pedagogical'.  She described poverty, basically, and had some interesting anecdotes including one about the 'Good Guys' who cruise around low income neighbourhoods and extort money for clothing. They played Mr Whippy style music and everything. My kids still haven't forgiven me for telling them that Mr Whippy only plays music when he's out of ice-cream, so sorry kids. No ice-cream today. 

Dorothy mentioned Nigel Latta, the working poor with 19K p.a. and a staggering statistic about 32 million less words in some houses. See my comments above about statistics. Dorothy's takeaway was that you can't cherry pick the bits you want: ubiquitous, empowered, connected and visible are all dependent on each other. This week I listened to Dorothy's presentation with this playing in the background - slightly more sombre and baroque than last week. I wouldn't recommend. 

Matt described his approach to youtube - as a tool but avoid the sharing aspect for the students: comments in youtube can be absolutely toxic. Anyway we started making our own playlists for our epic piss-up  'quiet reflection of the term' after the DFI exam next week. Matt actually instilled a (probably false) sense of confidence, saying we wouldn't even need the whole three hours although we have to come back after the exam to do a blog. It might need extensive editing later on - I'll just say that now. I remember exams at Uni mainly because of the celebrations afterward - so fond memories.

Didn't really get this finished - haven't got much on there yet.

Next up was another expert: Kent from Pt England school who demonstrated all sorts of very cool stuff to do with livestreaming - with the focus on Youtube although it could be done across a number of platforms including Facebook. Drones, cameras, all sorts of fancy media stuff - there's still some money in the media budget so hoping there'd be enough for a cheap drone.

Then we were into some google draw stuff which is all relatively new to me; I didn't even know google draw existed last year. Herman's spent some time with me showing me how this stuff works already but I still need practice. Doing some polyline stuff with faces - which also bleeds into the next presentation on slides and animation. Actually, there was way more than just animation - it's just that animation appeals. Below is the animation I came up with based off a picture a student called Troy drew on the board. I had a go as ninjas are cool and I thought this would be appealing to our boys. I must admit, it needs a lot of fine tuning as it looks a bit rubbish. Never mind.

Thanks Matt.

DFI Session 7 Meme this!

DFI this week was presented by Stef who came all the way from Auckland for wet and dismal Gisborne day. She didn't start though, that went to Dorothy who delivered this presentation on being visible and being connected. We connected via hang-outs. I had an inspirational moment and, while listening to Dorothy's presentation on visibility, I also had the Peddlers performing 'On a Clear day' in the background on loop. Note to Dorothy, it made the presentation-charismatic, inspiring- so much more powerful having this music playing; and to reinforce Dorothy's message, I turned on captions. Not on the song - on hang-outs. They actually followed what she was saying fairly closely although there was some weird amusing stuff that was nothing even close to the word Dorothy said. I was also impressed when Dorothy used the word 'egalitarian' a couple of times. She talked about the value of tweeting and blogging. Interestingly, on her slide of the clusters, Gisborne looked the biggest cluster.
I was looking forward to today's session because I saw there was some stuff on forms - which I thought I had a reasonable handle on, and sheets which I am absolute rubbish at.

Stef presented forms. Great presentation. I immediately made a copy. Some of the presentations I haven't been able to. Running a staff PL session on a Tuesday morning is not without its challenges and this Tuesday’s session was focused on forms. Relevant to today then. Ambitiously, I planned to show how to make a self marking quiz, a look at exit tickets and complete by showing how to get a file download through forms that is embedded and shares immediately to sites. This did not happen. At least, not the way I’d planned. Immediately the session bogged down in finding where forms are in the ‘waffle’ to an extended question and answer about the vagaries of choice in ‘settings’. Into the content of the questions, I thought I’d show how to insert a picture. Cue more questions-photo editing, taking screenshots, picture size-I thought I was 2nd year Ron Weasley in a world of digital muggles but maybe I’m more fourth book Cedric (and yes, I know what happens to that poor bastard - that's kind of the point). The next progression of learning was a caution about sharing the quiz but not sharing the editable form. This, I felt, is a super important basic as student voice for appraisal purposes are collected through forms. Whether it is an assessment or a personal reflection on your teacher, not sending the form with editing rights and access to everyone else’s responses is crucial. Privacy is not just about deleting your ‘history’ you know. But worryingly, according to the reaction, this was not common knowledge or practice. I hope it is now. When I finally got to the files through forms part and embedding, I had run out of time. Look, it wasn’t without its wins. ‘Ando’ was asking about inserting a screenshot of a graph and when I took him through it, said I had shown him about 30 things and he’d be lucky to remember five. And that wasn’t a complaint. He was stoked. We’re a tough crowd I guess. No violent threats? Tick. A couple of people say ‘thanks bro’. That’s a double tick. You should have heard the complaints after a certain staff meeting I was blamed for. ‘When I catch up with Yuiley, I’m going to punch him in the balls’ came from one of my friends and colleagues. I can’t repeat what the others said. But it wasn’t great. Anyway - I learned some new thing about blogs from our session with Stef and started making this form that separated questions in sections and made that only correctly answering a section led you on to the next one. I was, in part, inspired by Tim who had made a maths test that returned you to the start if you got something wrong.

Maps was next. Completely new to me, I enjoyed having a go at this and managed to successfully import the data from the google form we had earlier completed. Thinking that Tim was completely taking the piss when he put 'Gisborne' as his ideal holiday destination but he explained he was from Auckland - and that traffic...Here's my map:



Google sheets This was a deep dive. I was well out of my depth in about four minutes. Not Stef's fault - I'm just rubbish at this stuff. I had to often ask either Josie or Robbie who were sitting close by. I have to say I learned a lot. Little basic things like changing column sizes, manipulating data by sorting - using the wine glass. Dragging the corner to fill the boxes with the formula. Ended up making a graph comparing Robbie and Tim's blog hits with my own. Mine showed an incredible decline. I'm not discouraged though. Here's a chart I created using it:

Tim and Robbie both emphasised the tremendous drop-off. Several times. Thanks guys. Actually I went a little wild pressing buttons and am not sure I'll be able to repeat the fancy looking graph I've done here. We also looked at some blogs and watched a girl who looked about 13 screencast a video doing all sorts of stuff quite casually on her blog - embedding data and graphs. Made me feel well behind.

Memes are a new addition to our visual language strand of learning and also something I've also been thinking about this week. While most memes are for humorous intent, some are not - such as this example shared by actor James Woods; the symbolism is pretty heavy and nuanced.

Couple of my years ago my brother and his 8 year old daughter went hunting. She shot a deer and (as you do as an initiation) took a bite of the heart. My brother took a picture and enthusiastically posted it with the description of how she’d bitten its warm quivering heart. (and people say he's the nice brother). Turns out that lots of people don’t think that’s cool at all. A smaller, slightly more worrying group think it’s super cool. He (and his daughter) were memed, written about in all sorts of foreign news publications, youtubed about.  Now, I got memed this week. First, a little context - I hope I’m not oversharing. Slightly less dark than Woods meme: so a couple of boys said mean things (Snapchat? Instagram?) about my daughter -and it just so happens that those boys go to the same school I work at. Unfortunate for them. So I catch up with them for a completely professional but slightly less than friendly chat about it. That was a couple of weeks ago. And then I see this image that is being shared around created by another boy in the same level.

Obviously my chat was nothing like this. I just don't look that old!


So tools: quizlet, kahoot, google forms are great in that they give instantaneous feedback - self marking stuff is great. It’s part of the appeal of Education Perfect: data is immediately generated; students know what they’ve done: wrong and right. But there is a downside. One of the most important skills across humanities’ NCEA subjects (English, History, Classics, Geo, Media) is the ability to argue a point. Include examples to justify the argument. Expand upon and develop that argument. This is often more important than the content itself. We don’t give credit for generating the politically correct argument, we give credit for mounting a solid argument. And this is not easy for self marking algorithms because the content can take so many forms and won’t necessarily match the predetermined correct answers. You don’t get that instant endorphin hit that you would get from a google form or Kahoot (or complimentary blogpost comment). Now I love Kahoot - competition, leaderboards,funky music- the boys at GBHS are frothing for this stuff. I’ve created 43 of them: testing spelling, grammar, punctuation, film terms and genre. Generating a results sheet that downloads straight to my google drive is an advantage. Forms are also pretty buzzy and just as data friendly with columns of numbers and colourful graphs which leave me cold - but I certainly know data nuts who think colourful graphs are amazing and use them to show off to people who should know better than to be impressed by colourful graphs. Education Perfect has a feature called ‘Dash’ that pits students against each other in races to correctly answer questions and they go nuts. It’s learning. It’s ‘gamification’ too. But this is as shallow as facebook ‘likes’. Surface learning is great but that deep analysis that’s required is just not getting the love that it deserves. And while data can tell a story, there are other stories that it misses.

Robbie and Tim and I were discussing nefarious ways to boost our blog hits including sending the link to all our students and getting them to click on it. Pretty good way to boost hits and actually, the same sort of games get played by schools all the time regarding their NCEA results. Unethical?