Day 5 Sites. And Cyberstupidity

Cybersmart was the topic last week. Ironic how quickly things change. Wednesday night -open evening at GBHS for all year 8 boys and their families. So I left my laptop on the desk in the library. It was open and casting to a screen upstairs. I stepped outside briefly to inspect health and safety standards at the sausage sizzle with Neri (another staff member) and left my laptop unattended and logged in. Neri, between bites of a sausage, asked ‘Bro, have you lost your phone SIM?’. Confused, I looked at his phone as he showed me an email that I had sent the entire staff while I was standing outside, ensuring the grease to bacteria ratios were correct on the BBQ. Turns out, someone had ‘pranked’ my emails and told the entire staff I had lost my SIM and could they send me their numbers. Some dismissed it as a hoax, others are sending concerned messages with numbers that may or may not be correct. Others are saying it’s Karma and making all sorts of off-colour suggestions that I can’t repeat here. I’m not even the least bit suspicious about Tim who was loitering nearby, blamed Eric and keeps worriedly asking about video surveillance. I trust Tim-he wouldn’t have had anything to do with it. (But come-on, Eric clearly wouldn’t be the culprit. He doesn’t even know how google docs work). Tim, interestingly, suggested as a 'payback' that I could get on the offender's laptop and send a whole lot of offensive emails from them to other people but on some kind of schedule so they would go out at random times. Pretty nasty trick Tim - I wouldn't, in any good conscience, be able to do this as you well know.

Perhaps unfairly, I have been accused of all sorts of dodgy shenanigans regarding computers. Obviously, I am innocent of the accusations but throw enough mud at someone… Our DP, once had an unfortunate ‘trick’ played on him. Someone who knew a thing or two about computers realised that you can change the default sounds a computer makes and went into Pete’s (the DP) computer and changed his sounds for some custom noises. And then, so the apocryphal story goes, the offender muted his computer so the crime was hidden for a time. Unfortunately, Pete found out what the noises were during a disciplinary meeting with a constantly truanting boy and his parents. He had, apparently, gone to print a copy of the boy’s attendance and when he pressed the print function his computer loudly announced “Hello, my name is Borat, I lika you I lika sex!” accompanied with some ethnic music. In a panic, embarrassed in front of a couple of parents and a student he had just reprimanded, Pete tried to shut things down. The computer then loudly played the sound of a man rhythmically grunting and panting along with the sound of a sheep intermittently baa-ing. It sounded like….Well, I guess it sounded like the man was carrying the sheep up a steep hill, grunting and panting with the exertion and the sheep was not interested in being carried.  Maybe. I’m not sure what else it could have been.

I heard about this from our systems manager, Malcolm who started sniggeringly calling me ‘the cyberfarmer’ and when I asked why, told me I was the chief suspect. Pete (the DP) commented on my email hack that it was the very definition of irony but I think his definition comes from that terrible Alanis Morrissette song-which has no actual irony -  rather than a dictionary. Anyway, don't do stuff like this.

Other things I have been falsely accused of include the time when someone put a folder called ‘dwarf porn’ on one of the Science teacher’s desktop (his name is also Peter), took a screenshot and then set that screenshot as a background after deleting all the files on the desktop. I knew nothing about this either or about when someone accessed that same teacher’s trademe account that he had left open and bought a large number of extremely risque items - the least offensive of which was a polka dotted g-string. It can’t have been me- I didn’t even know trademe had that stuff. I’m probably leaving out the worst details but I just can’t stomach that kind of stuff. I’d like to state right now, for those who don’t know me so well, that I’m the kind of guy that straightens his tie, doesn’t use bad language and ensures that everyone is putting in %100 effort - not the kind of guy that resorts to highly unprofessional nonsense such as I have described. Clearly, none of this stuff is the least bit funny or even mildly amusing and it needs to stop. I'm obviously some sort of target for this nonsense -I've no idea why but assume it's because I'm such a straight shooter, get things done without the mucking around type guy.

Berated by Robbie on my lack of ‘cybersmarts’, I had to reluctantly concede he was right- there are people out there capable of doing all sorts of terrible and unprofessional things that I wouldn’t have either the inclination or imagination for and that best practice is to lock your screen if you are away from your computer. Also, pull your socks up,tuck in your shirt and be cybersmart not cyberpranked. Actually, if you put cyber in front of lots of words it makes it sound hightech and brainy. My cyberstudents are completing cyberassignments using various cybertools. Don’t overdo it though, you’ll sound cyberpretentious.

First on the agenda today after a whip around about what was working.
Presentation of a slideshow by a bloke called Gerhard from Auckland who talked about sharing while going through the slides. He was justifying why blogger is used (even after ten years - which is nearly an eternity in internet years which are worse than dog years) and described it as the Toyota Corolla of blogging in that it is a fairly safe way to learn how to share online. Side note: my first car was a 1981 Toyota Corolla and it was less than reliable. Constantly leaking carbon monoxide into the interior of the car, I had to drive around with the windows open all the time which could get super uncomfortable. It would often stall at a give-way and not start up again. My experience with Corollas are certainly not all positive.  Gerhard emphasised being thoughtful, helpful and positive in terms of blog comments. I'm sure Tim will take this to heart. Gerhard didn’t mention shitposting or trolling once - probably a good choice.

Next up was a deep dive into class sites. We tore into some sites with enthusiasm. In a positive, helpful and thoughtful way, we deconstructed the first site which was cluttered, busy and way too dark - and not in a cool way either. On the positive side, the teacher was doing a film study on Django Unchained.  Other sites we looked at were better; colourful, less cluttered and simpler to navigate.

Looking at our own sites, we had to fill in a google form assessment that looked at the form and function of our own sites. I’m hoping for some positive comments, but to be fair, my planning procedure is usually ‘Load, Fire, Aim’. And that’s how it looks.

Goal setting - apparently ‘make it to lunch' is not a proper goal so I decided to try and touch up my media site with some better looking buttons as the buttons I’ve got are fugly. Maria asked whether fugly meant ‘funny and ugly’ and I agreed, that’s exactly what fugly is. I mucked around with remove bg and made some editing adaptions and now my media site has the heads of iconic villains as buttons. Clicking on Darth Vader’s face takes you to ‘Advertising’, while the Night King from Game of Thrones takes you to ‘Camera angles and shots’. As an aside, I was pretty disappointed with that particular villain’s demise. Like the Y2K bug, he didn’t have the catastrophic effect that he was supposed to. Anyway my site is slightly less funny and ugly. You might be thinking Hmmm - but you should have seen it before.

Here are my buttons: (Also don't read the text - some of that stuff was made up when I was bored)

Day 4 DFI Friday 16 August. Honestly, my drawing is Thingy from WhatNow.

Cybersmart rather than cybersafety. Cyber from the greek word meaning skilled in steering or governing means pretty much anything to do with the spread of the internet. I wonder whether 'bubonicsmart' would be a better metaphor and it would fit with the whole 'viral' idea. In this context, it relates to being responsible users of the internet. One of the tips was not have have a whole lot of don'ts; instead show students what they should be doing. We didn't look at deepfake, the darkweb, install a TOR browser or scan through the deepweb/darknet or torrent sites. Instead we looked at a slides presentation that had lots of fun tips about being safe on the interwebs. In fact, later on in the day, I made a short video using screencastify where I scrolled through the 'smart legal' slide and a couple of attached resources. I'll try and embed it in this blog.

Hapara and the joys of big brother: monitoring and focusing students’ work went over to our staff like an open bar to an alcoholic. Or to pretty much anyone that likes a drink or two. I know I do. Some good tips today - especially around naming documents and organising folders - changing the view to 1 file in the folder so you can see which of your students have actually done what you told them to do two seconds ago and moved it into the correct folder.

We all had a go with Chromebooks - using shortcuts/taking screenshots/right click. Beneficial as it is good to know the hangups with using a chromebook; first thing you notice are the differences. We had a slides activity to work through. Robbie thought it was a good activity to give to the boys - I agree. In fact I think our staff should have a crack at it. On the same grotty, stained chromies with loose keys and shonky touchpads that our boys routinely defile.

Ipads. All the apple stuff is loaded for $$. I’ve got a Macbook. I found the ipad stuff difficult and I’ve got one. I use it for teacher observations and not much else; in fact my oldest daughter uses it to watch an atrocious reality show called Love Island. Bumped into 'Grinter' the principal of Rotorua Boys' at the Auckland airport. He was extolling the virtues of using ipads as RBHS has gone fully ipad. There's no keyboard and they're more than twice the price. But he thought they were great creative tools... I don't think we'll be going there.

Screencastify - this is another great tool, although I have gone down the 'Loom' rabbit hole instead. Loom offers 100 free videos that it hosts. And I've used 76 of them so far this year. In fact I've started recording my marking/conversations with students .Advantages of (free) screencastify: 50 videos per month that are downloaded straight to drive and there's the drawing functions. Advantages of (free) Loom: editing and hosting 100 videos that can be commented on and you easily can see how many times each video has been watched. This can be discouraging. If you hit the 100, you'll have to download them to drive.

Actually, now that I watch this video, I realise that my drawing looks a bit like Thingy from What Now - although you'll have to skim through to the end. Probably shows my age right?

Alright then, my trip to Tamaki last week. Russell started by giving us a description of the school community: something like 30% Tongan, 26% Samoan, 23% Maori and the rest is a combination of the other islands, Phillipino and 2% Pakeha. At least, I think it was something like this. My brain shuts down with statistics really quickly - even faster if you show me graphs. Very low average income and lots of students commute to the school - and lots of students commute to go to other schools - and lots of movement. The school wears the loss of the chromies when students move.

Five computers in each class (not chromes) for those who forget or are getting their chrome fixed.
We looked at some of the sites - Hinerau Anderson (tech) gave a tour of her site. Impressive - she said it was the third iteration and her first couple of sites were trainwrecks - although, at the time she thought they were gold. Russell talked about the uniformity of the sites - for student’s ease of navigation. So the name was the teacher, then subject. Year levels across the top. Calendars organising coursework were the first content. However, looking at the different staff sites, they did not always conform to the model. Good model to see though, and borrow from.

Tour of classes. No class seemed bigger than 13 students. 13 -  WTF!  Also interesting - instead of all teachers using Hapara workspace there was variation. The first student I spoke to had a couple of classes using Google Classroom, a couple with Hapara workspace and another couple that just used sites - the student referred to this as ‘Drive’. Not all staff were as accomplished as Hinerau Anderson either - she was obviously a bright light and had her courses/content organised outstandingly well. In terms of course content, Tamaki weren’t doing anything that seemed out of the bag special - they were using the same sorts of content and tools (such as Education Perfect) but the advantage was how visible everything was on sites. Another difference was that all students had devices - which were not in use in every class. One class was doing an annotation activity for heath that involved a text reading about the dangers of Methamphetamine. They were using paper and highlighter pens - it could have been done on a doc, but they’d chosen to go ‘old school’. Not too many ‘shared learning spaces’ - in one double class, the teacher was explaining the vagaries of her year 10 Social Studies course to us while at the other end, a member of the Y12 English class played hip hop music through a bluetooth speaker and others were involved in a boisterous discussion about a subject I’m not sure about but am confident it wasn’t anything to do with English. It felt a bit like GBHS. David Winter persisted in asking the English teacher an awkwardly worded question while we disrupted her class. She didn’t hide her annoyance.

Blogs - these were not commonly used. Tamaki, like Hornby, experienced a significant drop off in the senior school. In fact juniors were not so keen either. They were optional - and an alternative used for sharing was the google + communities. We had some discussion about the use of blogs as a method of increasing writing practise (I was about to say mileage but we have the metric system and kilometrage doesn’t have the same ring to it). If blogger is merely a tool for sharing, then google + communities is a fine alternative, but in terms of reflection on learning using writing… Well, I guess the jury’s still out. Jason noted that they have a lot of wrecked chromebooks to fix. They have a school of about 600 students and 50 staff - and a full time techie with an intern coming in for two days of the week. And they were busy cannibalising broken chromebooks and fixing minor and major issues with students' busted stuff. Jason said they had a lot more repairs, possibly due to the fact that the chromes go home each day and get munted around.

What GBHS has to improve then, is the visibility. Developing sites is ideal - if every teacher can start putting stuff together on sites then we are not too far away.