This year's list of how to learn in 2011 is filled with surprises and great finds.Post from: The eLearning Coach11 Ways to Learn in 2011

Each year I receive the promotional material for the e-Learning Africa Conference. In 2012 it is being hosted in Benin. Initially I thought that the developing world would be playing catch-up with new technologies like e-learning but then I remembered my trip to Tanzania in 2001 to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. In the villages around the base of the mountain there were frequent wooden shacks selling a very limited range of products and the three brands that were the most widespread were Coca Cola, Fanta and Vodafone. I realised then that large parts of Africa had skipped a generation of communications technology - the infrastructure for landline telephones had never made it to many parts of the countryside so when mobile phones became cheap enough the demand for them in Africa was enormous. For the first time people in remote villages could make calls on their own phones. And it appears that the same is true of the ‘learning infrastructure’ - the massive demand for learning combined with the geography and the need to keep costs low has meant that e-learning has a vital role to play in developing the skills and capabilities of poorer people across Africa. It’s good to see a new technology being used in such a positive way. Some day I will get to the conference myself and experience e-learning African style. e-Learning Africa Web Site

This post is part of my continuing series of weekly lesson summaries. My goal is to give parents & caregivers in our school community the resources needed to extend student learning at home, and to share my professional practice with teacher colleagues around the world in the hopes of improving my craft. Week ending 02/14/14 Kindergarten What we learned / did / explored together: This week’ s lesson was stolen borrowed adapted from the STEM Mom Gummy Worm Measuring Activity which I loved the moment I saw it. Children learned subtraction using manipulatives while practicing measuring skills… and they got to enjoy a tasty treat  too! Students were asked to first measure the unstretched Gummy Worm and record the result (in CM) on their worksheet. Then they were to carefully stretch the gummy worm as far as it would go (without breaking) and record that measurement. Finally they would use the cube manipulatives to line up cubes equal to the larger of the two measurements, then "take away" cubes equal to the smaller number. What’s left is the difference, which they recorded on their worksheet, and then they got to eat the gummy worm! Each student got to measure and record data twice. Kids also got to color in a worm worksheet at the end of the lesson. What I observed / inferred / connected: Kinders are learning subtraction now, so my timing was good. Unlike last year, students worked independently rather than in teams. Everyone was at least partially successful! What students can do at home: The STEM Mom Gummy Worm Measuring Activity is easily replicable at home with ordinary objects and a pape table for data collection. Try it! Check out the Kindergarten Symbaloo for fun activities and skill builders! First Grade What we learned / did / explored together: This was DEMOLITION WEEK as we got to TEST our mortar walls to determine which mortar was stronger: clay flour + sand or clay flour + soil. First, we examined the walls: where they the same size? Shape? Color? Which mortar had more cracks? Did we think the wall shapes/sizes would affect our results? Then it was time to do some damage! Our "wrecking ball" was a golf ball suspended between two traffic cones. We used the provided guide to ensure each ‘drop’ was the same angle/distance. We predicted the level of damage we’d see - either "no damage," or "a little damage," or "a lot of damage." Once we observed the actual results and compared them to our prediction, we came up with another estimate, this time, of the number of strikes necessary to completely destroy the wall. We continued until the wall was totally obliterated. Then we talked about what we saw and what we thought it meant, and determined, based on the data, which mortar was stronger. What I observed / inferred / connected: This was only the second time we’ve ever done the lesson, but the results were just as interesting. Kids were fascinated by the rock walls’ ability to withstand damage and cheered every time a chunk of mortar or stone went flying (off in the reverse direction, away from students). In the end, with all the walls demolished, we had our data from all five first grade classes and are now ready to make a final analysis this coming week. What students can do at home: Short of having a conversation with your child about the experience, there isn’t much you can do to replicate this part of the lesson, unless you’re really, REALLY dedicated. Check out the First Grade Symbaloo for fun digital activities. Second Grade I’m skipping the update for Second Grade this week to get us in ‘sync’ with my other summaries. Catch us next time when we will be talking about the next phase of the Doodle for Google contest! Third Grade I’m skipping the update for Third Grade this week to get us in ‘sync’ with my other summaries. Catch us next time when we will be talking about the assessments that we used to wrap up our Engineering is Elementary unit on wind energy! Fourth Grade I’m skipping the update for Fourth Grade this week to get us in ‘sync’ with my other summaries. Catch us next time when we will be talking about the results of the Fourth graders’ interviews with the Kindergarten students. Hopefully the picture above will pique your interest!

This post is part of my continuing series of weekly lesson summaries. My goal is to give parents & caregivers in our school community the resources needed to extend student learning at home, and to share my professional practice with teacher colleagues around the world in the hopes of improving my craft. Week ending 02/21/14 Kindergarten What we learned / did / explored together: Students worked in the "old lab" (officially referred to as Elementary Computer Lab #1) on a project designed to familiarize them with the basics of PowerPoint: entering text, capitalization & punctuation, moving around existing slides, dragging and dropping, and so on. We also got to practice logging on and logging off. What I observed / inferred / connected: Thanks largely to the efforts of the Kindergarten teachers (who reinforced the concepts once I taught them), most students are able to successfully log onto our Windows 7 PCs using the Kindergarten user account. This is wonderful and an important skill for them to master as our classroom PC all run Windows 7. Students were very successful traversing the network (opening drives, folders and files) which is something we usually ask of first graders. The counting and sorting was fairly low-level but that was intentional as I wanted  them to focus on navigation and data entry skills. The ‘color by number’ page was skipped in some classes due to time constraints. Overall it was a very challenging lesson and the kids did great! What students can do at home: Unless you happen to have Microsoft PowerPoint, there isn’t much kids can do to practice with the application, but if you do, go ahead and create a basic presentation (several blank slides) and let your child loose! Check out the Kindergarten Symbaloo for fun activities and skill builders. First Grade What we learned / did / explored together: We finished the Engineering is Elementary unit, "Designing Walls" by working as a class on a quick review of key terms, then completing a refresher on the steps of the  Engineering Design Process, and finally, by having students complete a "visual reflection" capturing what was happening in the story during each phase of the  Engineering Design Process. Each of these is shown above. What I observed / inferred / connected: Students seemed to enjoy these final few activities and the recap of the work we’ve done over the past several weeks. This is one of our most demanding STEM units. Thanks to the dedication and creativity of our students, it’s also one of the smoothest running. Materials Engineering is a perfect subject for early elementary because it comes so naturally to kids of this age. They instantly "get it."  Their understanding of material properties and changes in those properties under different conditions seems almost innate. Though the terminology is new to them, they learn it quickly. The visual reflection is extremely powerful evidence of transfer  (knowledge gained). These kids can talk at great length about each phase of the  Engineering Design Process and what the characters were doing at the time. It’s truly rewarding to see. What students can do at home: Ask your child about this project, what they remember, etc., and specifically, about the five stages of the Engineering Design Process. See what they can tell you! Check out the First Grade Symbaloo for fun digital learning activities. Second Grade What we learned / did / explored together: After starting the lesson by logging onto the Chromebooks and doing a little keyboarding warmup, we presented and discussed an entire page’s worth of Google Doodle ideas generated by all of their classmates. They then created a Doodle (for some it was their second or more) which we collected. We will be using these in a PowerPoint project next week before submitting them officially for consideration. What I observed / inferred / connected: Kids’ creativity never ceases to amaze me. Between the ideas they came up with and the visual representations, I was blown away! What students can do at home: The Doodle for Google contest will be running for several more weeks and students MAY enter as many times as they like! So feel free to follow the link and print off more entry forms as desired! Check out the Second Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities and KEYBOARDING PRACTICE! Third Grade What we learned / did / explored together: We finished the Engineering is Elementary unit "Designing Windmills" with teams doing some analysis of their final blade designs and a whole-class review of important concepts from the past several weeks. Students also tried several keyboarding activities, including Nitro Type (above) to help me decide which to begin using more frequently. What I learned / observed / inferred: This unit, though it took a bit longer than expected, was rewarding, effective, and I believe, will be memorable for years to come. The science concepts presented were easily understood thanks to the experiments and hands-on creative aspects of the lessons. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen kids this excited in my class, and, that’s saying a lot! What students can do at home: Ask your child about this unit, what they learned about wind energy and how it can be converted into other forms of energy. Ask them what they thought of their windmill design and how it could be improved. Check out the Third Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities and KEYBOARDING PRACTICE! Fourth Grade What we covered / did / explored: Inspired by the Stanford d.School lesson, "Back to Kindergarten," 4th graders interviewed Kindergarten students to find answers to questions about life in Kindergarten today. They took notes which were then transcribed into Google Docs when we returned to the STEMLAB. What I observed / inferred / connected: This. Was. AMAZING!!! It was so refreshing to watch 4th graders carefully and patiently phrasing their questions, and it was inspiring to watch Kindergarten students talk IN DETAIL about aspects of their learning experience. It was over very quickly but it was extremely effective. What students can do at home: Ask your child to compare and contrast life in Kindergarten when they were students to what it is like today. You may be surprised at the results! We will be writing up our findings this coming week. Check out the Fourth Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities.

It was very sad to hear this morning that Steve Jobs had died after finally losing his battle with pancreatic cancer. Apple has had a profound effect on the way information and communications devices look and work and this is largely attributable to the innovative and insightful team who set-up and ran the company over the last 30 years. Over the years I have had a love/hate relationship with Apple. The love started in 1984 when I was writing software user guides for Racal Electronics. At the time we were writing drafts by hand and then having them typed into a lone IBM PC running Wordstar. Just to give you a flavour of what that was like the screen was a phosphorus green and in order to make a word bold you had to type formatting commands into the text itself. All illustrations were done entirely by hand using basic technical drawing equipment. One day, one of our contractor software engineers arrived at the office in his red Porsche with his a new ‘toy’ - an original 128k Apple Macintosh. I was blown over by the simplicity of the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer) interface. Just by clicking and pointing you could do so much more than was possible on the IBM PC. Of course I later realised that the underlying technology had been invented by Xerox but Apple had developed it and made it affordable and truly understood the significance it would have on the future of personal computing. I was responsible back then for making the business case for Racal to buy its first Apple Macintosh. In practice we failed to get the company to replace the IBM PC as the core publishing system but we did manage to get it adopted as the system for developing all our illustrations. Later Racal did move over to Apple Macs for all their desktop publishing but by then I had left the company to start my own technical authoring business. My first purchase was an Apple Macintosh 512k which cost around £3,000 - a lot of money in 1984. It had no hard disc - just a single 3.5 inch floppy drive. Initially I used three applications - MacWrite (wordprocessor), MacPaint (bitmap editing) and MacDraw (vector drawing). They worked together like a dream. You could copy a drawing from MacDraw and simply paste it into a MacWrite page. To achieve this on a PC was laborious and fraught with difficulties. Later PageMaker arrived on the scene and the Macintosh pioneered the concept of desktop publishing. For years I used the Mac but eventually made the switch to the PC as Windows became more intuitive and the range of specialist software available made it more suitable for the type of work I was doing with clients. I still work on PCs to this day primarily because they are cheaper, and run the specialist software that I need. However in 2008 my love affair with Apple was revived when I bought my first iPhone. Strangely this device didn’t have the wow factor that I experienced when I saw that first Macintosh back in 1984 but once I started using it it really transformed the way I thought about productivity devices. The iPhone combined a number of technologies into one elegant and seamless productivity enhancing experience. The iPad simply adapted that experience for the big screen. As always it wasn’t so much the invention but the insightful way the device and its underlying technologies were packaged to provide a user experience that even the very latest Android devices struggle to match. One fact that was reported on the BBC today was that Apple did very little market research - it relied on the instincts of its people to develop products that would transform people’s lives. Steve Jobs wasn’t a geek - he loved technology but his lasting legacy was the way he developed products that put usability at the heart of the customer offer.  For this he will be missed. As a fitting memorial to Steve I recommend this book on the early days of Apple: ‘Revolution in the Valley’.

Asking questions promotes an active learning experience. How can you do this in eLearning?Post from: The eLearning CoachInquiry-based eLearning

This post is part of my continuing series of weekly lesson summaries. My goal is to give parents & caregivers in our school community the resources needed to extend student learning at home, and to share my professional practice with teacher colleagues around the world in the hopes of improving my craft. Week ending 02/28/14 Kindergarten What we learned / did / explored together: After a breif keyboarding warmup using either Keyboard Zoo or Keyboard Climber, kids gathered on the carpet in front of the SMART Board in my old classroom, a.k.a. Elementary Computer Lab #1, for a quick lesson on picture graphs and Excel. We took a survey of popular pets and noted the data on the SMART Board. Students then navigated the network (!) using Windows Explorer to locate the template I’d created, opened it, and entered the data. Finally, the students displayed their picture graph and printed, in color. (Three of five classes brought these home this past week, the other two will have them to bring home this coming week. The delay was due to a printer problem.) What I observed / inferred / connected: I encourage "keyboard awareness" in Kindergarten but wish I didn’t have to. The sad reality is that today’s Kindergarten student needs keyboarding skills more than ever - including for computer-based standardized tests. Navigating the network using Windows Explorer (Start Menu > My Computer > Shared Drive > Folder > File) is something we normally introduce in first grade but we did it this week as a necessity: it was easier to show the students what to do and let them do it than to scurry around the room opening the file for them. This worked really, really well. We only had serious problems on Friday due to some network file permissions - not a fault of the Kindergarteners. They were awesome! Navigating the spreadsheet template was pretty straightforward and no one got confused or frustrated. Printing the graphs in color was an achievement in itself when you consider the complexity of the menus they had to traverse. I was impressed! What students can do at home: If you are fortunate enough to have Microsoft Excel at home, fire it up, create a basic spreadsheet with some math facts or other data and see what your child can do! Bet you they will be able to enter data with ease. Check out the Kindergarten Symbaloo for fun activities and skill builders. First Grade What we learned / did / explored together: Students logged into the PCs my old classroom, a.k.a. Elementary Computer Lab #1, and selected a keyboarding activity as a warmup. (Most chose Keyboard Zoo or Keyboard Climber, but Super Hyper Spider Typer is also a favorite.) We then brought up some simple sentences (provided by my outstanding colleague Miss Amanda Jakimowicz) to review proper sentence writing technique. Capital first letters, various ending marks, space after punctuation, one space between words, and so on. I demonstrated how to start Microsoft Word and what the sentences looked like when we typed them. Students then got to choose a sentence from the list above, printed off in colorful strips (which they brought to their workstation), and did their best to enter it into the Word document. This continued for the duration of the class period. Finally, they saved their work to their network H: drive. What I observed / inferred / connected: Kids REALLY enjoyed this, much more than I ever expected. By making the sentences varying lengths, and letting kids choose which ones to do first, we differentiated effortlessly and it showed in the kids’ confidence levels. Soon they were powering through sentences and scurrying over to the table to return one strip and get another. They were free to do them in any order but their work had to be perfect; we (the teachers) circulated around the room pointing out problems for the kids to fix, which they did, happily. Everyone worked at their own pace, no one got frustrated, and in every class, a select few students were able to complete the entire set. I was blown away by how hard the kids worked. No complaints, no "I can’t do this," just enthusiasm and hard work. I think the sentences had something to do with it; they related to the content, as Dr. Seuss’ work has been visible all around school of late (with the approach of Read Across America Day.) Our number one problem with early writers - putting too much space between words - was almost a non-issue for us this week, which made me very happy. Kids continue to struggle with that issue well into Second grade. Perhaps this class won’t? What students can do at home: Typing simple sentences into a word processor is easy and fun if you make the sentences memorable and easy enough for the child to type. Subject and word choice is therefore crucial. Involve them in the process, maybe choose their favorite activity or toy. But keep it brief - no more than 10 or 15 minutes - unless they want to keep going. Don’t worry about fonts or other formatting just yet, we’re getting to that next week. Emphasize the writing and technique. Check out the First Grade Symbaloo for fun digital learning activities. Second Grade What we learned / did / explored together: Students fired up the PCs my old classroom, a.k.a. Elementary Computer Lab #1, for a short warm-up with Typing Pal. [Our goal with the warmup is to have the kids complete a single lesson, meeting or exceeding the speed (10 wpm) and accuracy (95%) targets, while using proper technique as much as possible.] Students then used Microsoft PowerPoint to create three-slide presentations including their Doodle. (My goal is to familiarize students with PowerPoint so they can be proficient with it for other projects including lessons done in other classes.) Students browsed to their Google Doodle image on the server, inserted it, then added a title and explanatory text. Finally, they saved the file to their network H: drive. What I observed / inferred / connected: This lesson went much more smoothly than I expected; students had no problems traversing the network in search of their scanned Google Doodle, or opening the PowerPoint template I provided, or creating new slides (as needed), or entering text, or saving their work. What students can do at home: If you are fortunate enough to have Microsoft PowerPoint at home, by all means, let your child show you what they know. (It may be helpful to start the application for them, but, it shouldn’t be necessary.) PowerPoint is one of the most intuitive applications we use and most students take to it naturally. In fact, it’s very common to see students using PowerPoint for home-made projects like "Why We Need a Dog" or "Why I Need a Larger Allowance." Check out the Second Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities and KEYBOARDING PRACTICE! Third Grade What we learned / did / explored together: Students fired up the PCs my old classroom, a.k.a. Elementary Computer Lab #1, for a short warm-up with Typing Pal. [Our goal with the warmup is to have the kids complete a single lesson, meeting or exceeding the speed (12 wpm) and accuracy (95%) targets, while using proper technique as much as possible.] Students then used either the website above or printed materials I had pre-assembled to answer some (admittedly very basic) questions about the Winter Olympics. (My goal was to get them to gather information we’d use for a lesson on PowerPoint this coming week.) Most worked with a partner until they were finished and then tore through a quick word search. What I learned / observed / inferred: This went about as well as I hoped and expected, retrieving information like this may not be the most exciting learning task possible, but, we can’t be designing windmills and sailboats every day, now, can we? Based on my review of the gathered information, we’ll have enough to build upon for our projects this coming week. What students can do at home: Check out the Third Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities and KEYBOARDING PRACTICE! Fourth Grade What we covered / did / explored: Students logged into their Chromebooks and warmed up with Typing Pal. [Our goal with the warmup is to have the kids complete a single lesson, meeting or exceeding the speed (15 wpm) and accuracy (95%) targets, while using proper technique as much as possible.] Students opened their previously created Google presentations and answered this question, based on their interviews last week and their own experience: "If I were in Kindergarten again, I would like it to be…" Meaning, either the way it was when they attended, or now. What I observed / inferred / connected: This was interesting to watch. I don’t have specific numbers but kids seemed to choose both "old" and "new" Kindergarten for a variety of reasons. My goal with this assignment was to get them thinking about how they like to learn because our next step is to begin designing a school, which I hope will lead to a lesson utilizing Sketchup and our 3D printer. Stay tuned! What students can do at home: Talk to your child about their Kindergarten experience, and the interview they conducted. Which "Kindergarten" do they prefer and why? Have them provide evidence to support their opinions! Check out the Fourth Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities.

Learn and use this model to decide between instructional or performance support.Post from: The eLearning CoachWorking With The Five Moments Of Need

I love this Moodle 2.1 Administration map from those nice guys at Synergy Learning. As an example of information design it doesn’t exactly make Moodle Administration look easy but as someone who has seen under the Moodle bonnet it’s actually quite handy. Most of all though it just looks good and encourages exploration of what is quite a complex learning platform. When is the iPhone App coming I wonder…? Link: Moodle 2.1 Administration Map (PDF)

This post is part of my continuing series of weekly lesson summaries. My goal is to give parents & caregivers in our school community the resources needed to extend student learning at home, and to share my professional practice with teacher colleagues around the world in the hopes of improving my craft. Week ending 03/07/14 Kindergarten What we learned / did / explored together: We explored two- and three-dimensional shapes this week with dry spaghetti and marshmallows! We warmed up with a review of basic 2D shapes Purpy’s Shapes, giving those who finished early a chance to stretch their brains with the mind-bending Invention Playhouse. Then it was time to start building! As you can see above, kids REALLY got into this activity, giving us a chance to identify, compare and contrast 2D vs. 3D shapes, making whatever we could (starting with the shapes on our shape card) and ultimately letting the kids just go wild. It was awesome. What I observed / inferred / connected: Last year, when we did this lesson for the first time, kids’ creativity really shined. This year, as last, we saw swingsets (again!), people, Sponge Bob, houses and more. We talked about lines and corners, depth, the fact that circles have no sides because they have corners. The materials were well prepared in advance and almost everything went smoothly! Kindergarteners struggle with "group work." They do best on their own; when paired, they often just end up working individually. What students can do at home: Sorry in advance if you try this and it makes a terrific mess! It’s great fun though and with practice (and support) even the youngest kids can be successful. Students have not yet covered this in regular Kindergarten so you may want to wait before doing the activity. First Grade What we learned / did / explored together: We were back in the ESLAB for some additional work with Microsoft Word, this time, focusing on basic fonts and formatting. Students opened the document they created last week and learned about highlighting as the basis for applying visual changes to text. What I observed / inferred / connected: Many students’ fine motor skills at this age are still very much in development and so it is natural for them to struggle a bit with text selection. Once they have that figured out the remaining tasks are simple What students can do at home: Basically, my advice is the same as last week - if kids can do some basic word processing at home, that will help a lot. The formatting skills they are learning here are applicable to just about every word processor ever made. Check out the First Grade Symbaloo for fun digital learning activities. Second Grade What we learned / did / explored together: After a keyboarding warmup, we continued working on our PowerPoints from last week, adding additional visual elements and cleaning up our writing. Along the way we reinforced network navigation (file open/save) and application of visual elements. What I observed / inferred / connected: Kids’ skills continue to improve with each passing class. What students can do at home: Same as last week. If you are fortunate enough to have Microsoft PowerPoint at home, by all means, let your child show you what they know. (It may be helpful to start the application for them, but, it shouldn’t be necessary.) PowerPoint is one of the most intuitive applications we use and most students take to it naturally. In fact, it’s very common to see students using PowerPoint for home-made projects like "Why We Need a Dog" or "Why I Need a Larger Allowance." Check out the Second Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities and KEYBOARDING PRACTICE! Third Grade What we learned / did / explored together: After a keyboarding warmup, students created a basic PowerPoint using the research they’d completed previously. What I learned / observed / inferred: This went better than I expected, with virtually every student powering through the task and completing their work with time to spare. What students can do at home: Check out the Third Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities and KEYBOARDING PRACTICE! Fourth Grade What we covered / did / explored: As part of our "Remembering Kindergarten" challenge/unit, based loosely on this terrific lesson on design thinking on the Stanford d.School K12 lab wiki, and my desire/intent to get our kids doing some 3D design work, I’ve taken the conversation in a new direction, asking kids to design their ideal school. We started with a group brainstorm: "How do you like to learn?" We then broke into teams of students who scribbled ideas for the perfect school all over the IdeaPaint "Great White Wall". I’m compiling these for further thought processing, cleverly disguised as writing / presentation / research questions that will have them testing their skills on a variety of PC and Chromebook applications. But for now, it was solely a brainstorming excercise. What I observed / inferred / connected: How do kids like to learn? Building ideas ranged from the ridiculous ("giant playground made of jelly beans") and the sublime ("holographs of famous people in history") but there were some supremely interesting and insightful comments. Some favorites: "Invention Room." "(illuminated) Hallway Navigation." "SMARTBoard desks" (the entire desk surface is a personal SMART Board). "Glass Roof." "Touchscreen Walls." This is going to be interesting. The grand plan here is for students to use Design Thinking to come up with a layout for a school which we will render using Sketchup and print in 3D. What students can do at home: Ask your child how they like to learn and how they’d make school better if they could. Check out the Fourth Grade Symbaloo for fun learning activities, in particular, keyboarding.