Visible Learning - A Tour Round my Class Site

Student made Rewindable Learning

When our Year 10 students started their Jump Start courses, I made them a new site especially for these 4 weeks. It is full of all the skills we will need through next year to take us into merit and excellence.
Part of this site is the Ako Ngātahi page, where I am talking about the students making their own digital learning objects (DLOs), that they can use to embed their own skill knowledge and teach others how to do something.

In our double period today, we made a start on this. We have had 2 and a half weeks of skills so far so the students had to choose which one they wanted to break down.
I eventually want them to use the drawing projector that I made so they can record themselves drawing and rendering. Today, we made step by steps on Google Slides.
I then made a new blog specially for this work so the students can upload their skills work over the year. This blog is going to be for all year levels.
There were 2 examples uploaded today, with more "in progress".
Link to this blog here
My hope for this work is that in the process of teaching someone else how to do something, the student's skills are cemented.

Using SOLO to structure Design Analysis

When my students choose to do Design and Visual Communication, I am not sure they are fully aware of how much written work we have to do. They choose Graphics for the drawing (obviously!!)
The analysis side of the work is always the hardest part that we have to do.

Our Year 10 students have started their NCEA Level 1 courses already, so they are now the Year 11's on their JumpStart four weeks at the end of the year.
Part of what I have set up for my group is some analysis exercises using SOLO as the structure to support it. I have broken the questions down into slowly increasing depth using the SOLO levels.
Here is the template with the questions ...


The exercise that we did first this week to start us off was to find a picture of a running shoe and post it into the class Google Plus Community. The notes they had to write with their post was answering the questions on the Unistructural page. They then had to write a comment on someone else's post answering the questions on the Multistructural page. I did this first / with them to give them some confidence. This is their first time in this class doing work in the community where everyone can see it. There was a little bit of nagging involved for some of them as they were hanging back, waiting, not posting. I have found this is normal as I have used the Google Plus communities for a couple of years now with my classes and they are always a little shy at first. They get over it fairly quickly when they realise that there is no judgement on what they post and we are helping each other out.  Here is an example of what we did on Friday. We only had a single period so only did the first two levels. Come and visit the community of you want to see more. As usual there is a post that is "outside of the box".. !!

Breaking Down the Standards ...

This year, I have been focussing a lot of time in breaking down the NCEA Design and Visual Communication standards. This came as a result of a slightly more "challenging" moderation report.

I have split the breakdown into achieved, merit and excellence, listing what all the words and terms mean (the standards are not written in the most student friendly way to be honest!! ), what they will do in the project to cover this and then where the resources are on the site.
This has been, first of all, extremely helpful for me to ensure that I am offering project tasks that allow the students to access excellence. It is then helpful for the students to know what the standards mean and what they have to do in their project work to ensure they are covering everything.

Here is a Level 1 standard :-

Architect Poster

AS91069

Promote an organised body of design work to an audience using visual communication techniques

4 credits - Internal

Standard	What does it mean?	What will you do?	Resources
Achieved Promote an organised body of design work to an audience using visual communication techniques. selecting and presenting the features of an organised body of work to an audience.	Promote - present the work in some way Organised - different parts working together as a whole Body of work - more than one piece of design work by your chosen designer Visual communication techniques - effective presentation of ideas using a range of methods - sketching, use of colour and tone, analysis … both drawn by hand and on the computer	Research pictures and information about your chosen architect. Highlight which key pieces of information you will use in your poster design. Use thumbnail sketching techniques to start to design the layout of your poster. Develop your design work using a computer application - making sure you are using a few examples of the designers work, not just one. Analyse the effect you have created with your layout developments. Produce a final poster using Adobe Illustrator. Write a final evaluation analysing your final poster.	Collecting images Collecting information Highlighting the important information Layout exercise Drawing thumbnail sketches Design Development Final Design
Merit Clearly promote an organised body of design work to an audience using visual communication techniques. purposefully selecting and applying techniques to ensure layout, composition and visual impact are appropriate to the context of the brief and audience.	Clearly - easily seen and understood Purposefully - with thought, not by accident Select - choose from a number of options of techniques Layout - how things are arranged Composition - how the design is made from separate parts and how they work together. Visual Impact - how the design looks and the effect it has	Achieved plus :- Explain why you have chosen the images you have on your designs. Produce a write up that summarises the life and style of the architect’s work. Analyse your thumbnail sketches as to how you have arranged your layout. Use design language in analysis of work. Explain how design elements have been used to achieve the design developments. Final design is very clear to understand, to read, to see. It gives a clear explanation of the architect’s work to someone else.	Producing the write up Using key design terms to analyse a poster Analysing thumbnail sketches Writing design development analysis This level also depends on the quality of your work and on you showing your understanding of your Architect.
Excellence Effectively promote an organised body of design work to an audience using visual communication techniques. communicating a high quality presentation that is convincing, shows accuracy of layout, visual impact, and precise execution of techniques.	effectively - does the intended job very well convincing - the evidence is there that your architect’s work has been taken into account in the layout of your poster. accuracy - correctly laid out, with no errors. execution - the method you chose to produce your poster	Achieved and Merit plus :- Analyse the key points of the architect’s work and use these to explain their style. Use the style of the architect’s work to influence the design of the poster. Use design elements well in the layout of the design work.	Key points and analysis This level also depends on the quality of your work and on you showing your understanding of your Architect.

I have been rewriting my Level 2 DVC course from scratch and have decided to include 2 Generic Technology standards to work alongside the DVC standards. The work I have been doing this week on the first technology standard has been greatly helped by breaking the standard down in this way as it is my first time working with this standard.  It has made it very clear in my head what we have to do.

Here is the Level 2 standard I have been working on this week :-

Level 2 Product Design Project

AS91354

Undertake brief development to address an issue

4 credits - Internal

Standard	What does it mean?	What will you do?	Resources
Achieved Undertake brief development to address an issue. identifying an issue as a result of exploring the context determining a need or opportunity and associated stakeholders reflecting ongoing consideration of the social and physical environment where the outcome will be developed and situated reflecting ongoing key stakeholders’ opinions describing the outcome to be developed and explaining why such an outcome should be developed explaining the physical and functional attributes required for an outcome producing a final brief comprised of a conceptual statement and specifications.	Undertake - to do something Brief - a description of what the product should do to solve a problem Address - to deal with the problem Issue - the problem Identify - recognise / highlight Explore - find out more Context -  place / situation Need / Opportunity - the problem that is to be solved Determine - decide Stakeholder - the person / people who will use your design Reflect - show / think carefully Consideration - careful thinking Attribute - a quality / feature Physical - things you can see and touch Functional - how it works Conceptual - based on ideas	Visit the cafe and analyse what all the different areas are that could have design work completed Write a questionnaire to take with you to the meeting with your client Initial meeting with your client to find out what their needs are and what area of the cafe they want design work for List the social and physical environment elements that the design will be made for List the clients’ opinions as to why the design needs to be made Write a description of what the product is that is going to be designed and why it is needed List all the the attributes needed for the outcome based on the client needs - physical (where and how it will be used) and functional (how it works) Write a design brief that includes a statement of what is to be designed and  list of specification points that need to be included	Context analysis task Group ideas for questions Writing the questionnaire Presenting the answers from the questionnaire Mood boards about the possible design eras Social and physical environment Product description and attributes Design brief Specification
Merit Undertake in-depth brief development to address an issue. prioritising social and physical environmental considerations related to where the outcome will be developed and situated reflecting ongoing feedback from key and wider stakeholders.	In-depth - lots of detail Prioritising - deciding which bits are the most important	Achieved plus :- List the social and physical environment elements that the design will be made for in order of importance. Give reasons why they are in this order. Use a questionnaire to get feedback from the customers of the cafe about the needs of the client and how it affects them	Prioritising social and physical environment elements and giving reasons for choices Stakeholders opinions and needs
Excellence Undertake comprehensive brief development to address an issue. describing the outcome to be developed and justifying why that particular outcome should be developed justifying the specifications in relation to the physical and functional attributes required for an outcome.	Comprehensive - includes everything that is necessary Justify - give good reasons Specifications - detailed description / list based on needs and situation	Achieved and Merit plus :- Write a description of what the product is that is going to be designed and give reasons with evidence, why it is needed While writing the specifications, link them to the physical and functional attributes that you have stated already.	Product description and attributes - focus on the reasons why Specification - focus on linking the physical and functional attributes

Jump Start

We are starting Jump Start for our Year 10 students in 2 weeks. This is where they stop being Year 10's and start on their NCEA courses. They have done their options and with the seniors having left for exams, the timetable changes to next year's.
I have decided to make a new site dedicated to jump start.

I am designing it to be full of work and exercises that will give them the skills to get through Level 1 Design and Visual Communication.

• Sketching and rendering are important drawing skills to take them through any of their design projects. 
• The research and analysis tabs are the two areas that are key to getting their achievement up into the merit and excellence levels.
• The Google Plus Community is our place where we work together and support each other.
• Ako Ngatahi is a new idea for next year.  I want the students to start making the how to's and rewindable learning elements, as well as me. How we present this is up for grabs at the moment - blog, site YouTube channel - I haven't quite decided. 

This site is a work in progress at the moment but if you want to take a look, here is the link. I've got another week to get it complete.

Using site Templates for Design Porfolios

I have been using Google Sites with my students as their their design portfolios for a few years now. The first thing we do at the start of a new year is make our sites and go over the Google skills they need like embedding docs and images onto their site, making new pages for each project etc. As the time goes on that we have been working online, the students are needing less and less google "skills" time, as they know what they are doing better than I do.

Where I continue to struggle each year is keeping up with getting the work up onto their sites. We always seem to be doing it at the end of projects, in a mad rush, instead of it being a gradual process over the course of a project.
I was talking about this with my HOD and she was agreeing with me and explaining what she was thinking about for next year, which was making a site template for her students, with areas for each task that they have to complete, so the students know what to put on the site and in what order. I am always keen to steal / borrow / use good ideas so I immediately jumped on this one. This came about at this time as we were discussing the order of work on the student sites needing to show the flow through the project. We were going through Level 1 moderation at the time, so the random order that some students had presented their work was a talking point.

What I have come up with over the last couple of days is this template design.
It includes tabs for all the projects they will do over the year and on each page, there are headings for all the tasks that need to be completed within each project.
Link to the template

There are 2 planner / calendar items on the home page.

The year plan is so they can see an overview of the year at a glance.

The embedded calendar is for another experiment next year. Again, the idea came from my HOD. She puts links to the tasks she wants the students to do that day on the class calendar using a href attribute in the calendar notes.

<a href="http://www.w3schools.com">Visit W3Schools</a>

I thought this was a great idea this year, but resisted trying it as we never seem to be where the calendar says we should be in the project. So the plan is to only put lesson task links in the calendar a week in advance. This means that the usual year layout will look out of place in the calendar if it is not matching the lesson notes. This was the reason I have separated the year overview into a snapshot.

I have also included a link to the Level 1 Google Plus community on the front page so they can find it easily and there is a link to the class site. Links to my site / project examples are on each page too. 

All these help links can be removed before the sites are sent away to Wellington in November to be looked at for external assessment.

I considered putting in the blank worksheets / docs in place on the pages but decided not to as the students like to do things in different ways and I don't want them to feel like they have to do it the same way as me.

It is a balance between trying to save them time and being helpful, and doing too much and being controlling. 

Time to wind in my inner control freak....

Time to put my money where my mouth is....

"Keep going"
"Learn from your mistakes"
"Pick yourself up"
These are things we say to students all the time.
This morning I received an email which means I have to put my money where my mouth is in this respect.
I had applied for the Core Education Vince Ham eFellows 2017 scholarship and the email this morning told me that I had not been successful.

The good thing is, the plan that I had put forward in my application is not something extra. I am intending to do the planned work with my Year 12 students anyway next year, so now I have to make sure I put as much effort into it as I would have done if they had accepted me,

The email I received was a generic "you have been unsuccessful" type, so I am not aware of why they think that my plan was not good enough.
I am going to include a copy and paste of my application here, and would be grateful if you have a little time, to give some feedback so I know where I can improve the focus for next year.
I have started the plan already with this year's Year 12 students, and they are helping me to start the planning for the course for next year.

Here is my application :-

Tell us a little about the context in which you work and your experience answer:

     I have taught Technology since 1995 and I moved to New Zealand in
     2004. Since then, I have taught Graphics / DVC at Tamaki
     College.
     I have been responsible for the Graphics / Technology department
     getting 3D printers and a laser cutter and I am taking the
     graphics / DVC course in a more product design direction.
     Since the school went fully digital and working on Google, I have
     also been the Google support person for the staff and have
     provided one to one PD and help as well as group sessions for
     them to learn how to use all the Google (GAFE) products.

 What is the area of practice you wish to investigate and develop further through this award? answer:

     I want to improve the achievement of my Level 2 DVC students.
     I wish to investigate the impact of a structured course which the
     students can work through at their own pace. This will be in the
     form of screencasts,forums and recorded skills sessions.
   
What is the background-answer:

     I investigated this briefly last year with one project at Level
     1. It gave the students a lot of support within the classroom
     setting as well as outside of it in terms of knowing where they
     were up to and what to do next. I was able to spend a lot more of
     my class time helping individual students instead of going over
     things and repeating instructions.
     A link to this investigation is here :-
     http://bobthedog3.blogspot.co.nz/p/mit-15.html
     This year, my teacher inquiry is based around improving Year 12 /
     Level 2 achievement and I am part of a "change" group at school,
     working with the ministry to effect change with the Year 12
     students.
     A link here to my Year 12 group enquiry so far :-
     http://bobthedog3.blogspot.co.nz/p/inquiry.html
     
Five minutes of total media time OR no more than 500 words of text-answer:

     I have a group of students in my Level 2 classes who are a very
     mixed ability group.
     Some have done Level 1 with me. Some have not done graphics with
     me at all. A large part of my group miss lessons throughout the
     year due to going on courses in other institutions like MIT. This
     makes following the structured course in DVC very difficult as
     they are all at different places and come in and out at various
     times throughout the year. I want all of my students to have the
     same opportunity to achieve the credits on my Level 2 course,
     regardless of whether they are in the classroom or not. The
     produced investigation will also benefit the students who are in
     the class as they will always know where they are and what to do.
     I also always have students who want to take my course but can't
     because of timetable clashes.
     This gives students the chance to plan their own learning at
     their own pace as thanks to the Manaiakalani Tamaki Learning
     Network, all the students have wireless access at home.
     This will give students access to the course and their learning
     at any time and give family access to know what the course is all
     about. The collaborative space  / discussion forum / google plus
     community will give the students chance to support each other, be
     the teacher and learn valuable skills about commenting and
     working with people online. (cybersmart)
     I will be able to support the students in the classroom in a much
     more personal and one to one manner to help them with their
     individual needs in regards to their project work and the
     students will be able to plan their own time more effectively
     when out of the class.
     As this is based around the "spiral of inquiry", I will be
     getting to know my learners and their individual needs in a much
     more effective way.
     If this proves to be an effective way of setting up a senior NCEA
     course, then this can be used at all levels to support student
     progress through their projects.

Planning Level 2 DVC with Year 12 Students

Today, I continued the conversation with the 2 year 12 boys who have agreed to help with the
planning of next year's Level 2 DVC course.
The first post about this is here.

I had 2 questions for them today :-

1. Should the flow of the course follow the standards, so the work for each standard is completed as a block or should it follow a more natural, design process path?

Their answer for this surprised me in a way. They opted for the work being blocked so that the work for each standard is together. They said that this would make it clearer to see what was needed to achieve each standard.
I understand their reasoning for their decision but does this mean that I have failed to build the design process into my course as the supporting sructure in the past and made the planning too dependent on the standards (teaching to the test?).

2. What product do you think should be the focus?

This year, we did lighting design.
Last year we did glassware and the packaging to go with it.
We discussed the situation that would be the focus of the brief, which is the school cafe that is open to the public on a Wednesday and run by the students.
The boys thought that glassware would be a more suitable product, and possibly extending it to include more cafe tableware, like table numbers, plates etc....
This will give opportunity to produce 2D and 3D design drawings and be able to make models of design work for development.

This continues to be a very interesting experiment with the students helping with the planning. Their viewpoint on things is very eye opening for me. I am trying to give them the questions to discuss together without me for a while so they are not just saying what they think I want to hear.

One of them asked today :-
"so Miss, if this course doesn't work next year, is it our fault?" ....
They are so funny