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.