Office 365 on C2K

This academic year saw the introduction of Office 365 to classrooms across Northern Ireland.

But what is Office 365??? Check out this presentation.

Digital Inking

Digital Inking is really changing the classroom.  Check out how I use it inside and outside of my classroom here.

Using OneNote for Staff Information

If you are interested in a way of reducing costs and quickly sharing and storing staff information – consider a ‘Staff Notebook’.

Take a look at the Office Mix here which explains all!

You teachers and your holidays….

I am sure many of you reading this will have heard this sentence repeatedly. I usually just laugh it off but I know that it frequently make teachers bite their tongues.

For me, this holiday was a time to catch my breath and relax.  Yesterday I got to catch up with my gorgeous nephew, who I don’t get to see as often as I would like – and take some cool photos (my other favourite past time). 

  
But! There’s always a but! Like many of my fabulous teaching friends, I did continue to work during the holidays.  

I set up a class OneNote for one of my exam classes – looking forward to trying that out with them. 

I also spent time learning new things on the Microsoft Educator Community site (MEC).  Over the years, I have watched the site evolve from PIL (Partners in Learning) Network, to Educator Network and now the MEC.  MEC is by far my favourite and I really like the professional development opportunities it gives!  You can access lesson plans, training materials and contact other educators.

Another feature of the site is ‘Achievements’ which are recognised with badges being awarded.  I was delighted to see the MIE Fellow and MIE Master trainer badges on my profile.  It’s great to be part of such a superb group of educators and to be able to contribute and gain ideas.

  
Some of those who also spent time sharing included my good friend, Barry who set up updated 42 tablets during his holidays for pupils in his school.   Marija and Noel put up with my endless random questions about OneNote and are always a very valuable source of advice. Not forgetting my tech partner, Nikkie who keeps my Twitter Feed full of useful information and resources.

  

These are just some examples of what “you teachers” have been doing during “your holiday”. I know many others have been marking and planning for the busy term ahead too!

Good luck for next term everyone! 😀

E2 : An Incredible Learning Journey

Four years ago I was invited to Prague to represent my school at Microsoft’s Global Educator Forum. In Prague I was able to see the newly released Office365 and meet amazing educators from around the world.

I continued to spend time keeping up to date with the different technologies available to support my teaching. As part of my professional development I have been involved with the Microsoft Innovative Teachers programme and now the Expert Educator programme for the last 6 years. It never ceases to amazing me how much technology has changed in the last 10 years.

This year I was selected to become a Microsoft Expert Educator Fellow and was invited to attend their Educator Exchange (E2 Conference) in Budapest. I am writing this on the flight home, as I reflect on such an incredible week. It was a real privilege to be working with and meeting truly amazing educators from all corners of the globe.

Some of the people I met this week included a teacher from Belgium whose students are collaborating with other counties to design items for their 3D printer. It was super to see real, printed 3D products.

Then there was one of the developers from Sway. I was honest that I am not a massive fan (yet) and his response – “Tell me what to do to make it better”. This was so good as one of my issues with Sway is the layout – he promised to look at this.

The keynote speakers were super. One of my favourite moments was during Anthony Salcito’s keynote, being on a Skype call with a professor in the Arctic studying climate change! Wow, just wow! Stephen Reid also showed us how gaming is such an important feature in the classroom and how it can be linked to numerous subjects, showing what his students had designed.

OneNote superman, Mike Tholfsen, was also there with his team where they released fantastic add-ins to help students with Special Educational Needs. Marija a teacher from Bulgaria also shared how her students were using OneNote Class Notebooks in their classes. We even got to sport our OneNote capes.

Then there was the superb Nikki from New Zealand. Nikki warmed my heart as we had so much in common and she taught me I how to use SharePoint. Nikki’s passion and enthusiasm for her students education showed no bounds.

A number of Fellows were asked to present at the conference. Nikki’s session was one of these. The AMAZING Lara Dabbagh showed us how she is using OneNote in her Geography classroom in Claregalway, Ireland. Both Nikki and Lara won awards for their super presentations – well done ladies!

I presented on how to minimize a teacher’s workload by ‘Going Virtual’. I was very relieved to see lots of educators attending my session as they had a choice of so many cool sessions. I also challenged myself and passed my Microsoft Office Specialist PowerPoint exam – phew!

Another role of the Fellows was to mentor and judge #HackTheClassroom educator projects. This was a great opportunity to meet people from all around the world. I had educators from Ireland (go Amanda!), Poland, India, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Russia, India, US, and many more. All of my teams inspired me with the ideas and commitment to their students! I was especially pleased to see all of my teams winning prizes in their categories (two category winners and one 1st runner up) 😀😀😀😀 Two of Lara’s teams also won.

There was also two events during the week – the STEM Makers Fair and the Learning Marketplace.

The STEM Makers Fair was fab. Fellows got to act as assistants for this and were given training the day before. Now, if you’d have told me I would be teaching someone to code, I would have truly laughed. But….I did it! Michael from the MicroBit Team and Gergerly (fellow, Fellow) put up with my random questions during the training, the following evening I was a wiz at showing others how to use the MicroBit – I really, really want one!

The Learning Marketplace was an opportunity for the superb educators to show what they had been doing in their classrooms. This was a real opportunity to find out what educators were doing in their classrooms worldwide. Amanda and Brendan from CP Setanta, Dublin showed us how their school went paperless and all of their students are using OneNote on Surface tablets instead of textbooks. Others were showcasing their students work, such as games they had created.

E2 ended in style with a spectacular Awards Evening at the National Gallery. The views were beautiful but what was even better was our new worldwide educator friends, cheering for each other at the awards.

I met some fantastic, inspirational people this week who I will definitely be keeping in touch with.

One word that sums E2 up? “Wow!”

The journey to E2 begins!

What can I say? I can’t believe that it’s finally time to make my way to Dublin, en route to E2 in Budapest.

It is such a privilege to be invited, never mind being a Microsoft Expert Educator Fellow representative as well!   

As for expectations of this week, I have fond memories of my time at the Global Educator Forum in Prague and I know it will be nothing short of amazing.

I’m excited to be meeting incredible educators from all over the world and look forward to sharing their passion for learning.  

 For anyone else joining me in Budapest, safe travels! 

Live from…..the bus! 

Office Mixing!

I have blogged before about using Office Mix but I continue to love it and couldn’t resist writing some more about it! 

I am delighted to have been chosen to attend Microsoft’s Educator Exchange Conference (E2) taking place in Budapest.  

During the time that E2 is taking place, I am missing a day for one of my exam classes.  This is usually a fabulous opportunity to get a good handle on the topic that the students are working on.  Worried about missing my students, I have made an Office Mix for each hour that the class are missing me. This is a great way to ensure that the class are doing exactly what they need to in order to meet the course requirements.  I mentioned to one of my students today about my plan and let her hear an example. After initially giggling and shaking her head, she did admit it was “cool!” – hopefully the others will be engaged too! (I’ve even left them a “Morning” and “Well done” message!

Microsoft have also asked me present my experiences of using a VLE in a range of situations. I’ve created a mix for this too which I will share with you all soon!

Happy mixing! 

 

Office Lens

I recently came across an app called Office Lens. I’d noticed the logo before but didn’t realise how super it actually is!

Office Lens allows you to take a photograph of:

• A document
• A business card
• A photo 
• A whiteboard

It then works its magic and translates this into text giving you the opportunity to export to:

• OneNote
• Word
• PowerPoint 
• Outlook
• PDF
• Photo Library

This is a really fantastic app!! I needed to fill in a form that someone had given to me on paper. As I like to keep digital copies, I used Office Lens to change this to a Word Document which I could edit.

Pretty neat! Worked like magic! 

 

Detentions! Do they really work?

I was recently approached by Magical Maths (which is a great resource for teachers) to blog about Detentions!  These are my thoughts!…..

Someone recently asked about how schools are using detentions. This led me to consider how far the school I teach in has progressed in the last 10 years. I teach in a high school in Belfast. When I began teaching there, one hour detentions were very common and staff were on a rota to take detention twice a week.

On detention afternoon pupils would pile into a classroom and be given a task that would not be very specific to their learning needs. The numbers kept rising and teachers’ became tired writing out detention slips. Parents were generally very supportive and did not really question the use of detention, it just happened and the majority pupils did it. Senior Leaders would be quite often use up their valuable time trying to find a ‘absconders’.

Numbers kept rising and when staff were asked the clear message was that it was not benefitting the pupils or staff. Instead of pupils undertaking meaningful or reflective work, they were undertaking meaningless tasks. One thing that was clear was that – the system wasn’t working!

We took the opportunity of a move to an innovative, new school building and to make a fresh start. Short 15 minute pastoral and departmental detentions remained for things such as forgotten homeworks but 1 hour detentions were transformed.

Firstly, detention was renamed as ‘Study Support’.   This then changed perceptions amongst pupils, parents and staff that this was extra time that pupils were using to learn!

Secondly, a more defined structure was put in place that made ‘Study Support’ harder to get in to. This gave staff more ownership of the issues that they were placing pupils into detention for. In order to place a pupil into “Study Support” staff must first outline what they have done to try to resolve the issue and have completed a 15 minute departmental detention, discuss with their Head of Department or Head of Year the situation, phoned home and only after this could a pupil be placed in ‘Study Support’ which is led by a member of the Senior Leadership Team. When putting a pupil into ‘Study Support’ the teacher must provide meaningful and productive work for the pupil to do.

I feel that this really made teachers consider the reasons why they were being put into ‘Study Support’ and the number of detentions dramatically reduced year by year as pupils started to realise that there was a clear chain of consequences. We also found that parents became more engaged. Even if they were phoning to query the reason for the ‘Study Support’, this was a great opportunity to onboard them in helping us support their child’s learning.

One resource that I found useful for pupil who had been put in for a pastoral reason, such as truancy, was a reflective journal. This made them think about what they did, why they did it, what could have happened and considerations for the future. This not only helped the pupils learn from their mistake, but also highlighted to us on several occasions about other pastoral issues – i.e. why they didn’t come to school in the first place.

We went from having nearly 50 pupils in detention per week to approximately 5 pupils per week. This term has had a very good start and we have only had 4 pupils in ‘Study Support’ since the beginning of September. This system has really transformed the number of detentions and general pastoral system in the school.

Moving forward there are lots of considerations for all schools. Does detention really matter? Does it make that much of a difference? Are there other consequences that are more effective? Is this benefitting pupils? There is no easy answer and every school is going to be different.

In closing, the best advice I can give no matter what your school decides is to ‘make it meaningful’. There is no point in a child sitting in front of you wasting time. Grab every learning opportunity there is to grab, and make awesome use of it!

Thanks for reading.

‘Twas the night before #niedcamp

by Bev and Barry 

‘Twas the night before niedcamp, when all through the house. Not a teacher was stirring, not even a mouse. The presentations on the pen drives, were saved with great care. And if all else fails – What’s App is there!

But there in the background, tucked nearly away, was a special presentation ready on Sway. But the WiFi was broken, The signal unstable, but we needn’t have worried, ’cause Dáithí’s got cable…

‘It’s hysteria!’ She cried, though most thought it was fear. The night before edcamp was already here! The nerves were on edge; the posters on blu-tac; but everyone knew the form of attack… ‘They’re not teal!’ Cried Corrine! ‘They’re hipster turquoise! They’ll look great on the girls but I pity the boys…’

Looking forward to tomorrow!