Reflections on Teachers' Convention (NCTCA2017)

February 9th and 10th was the NCTCA 2017 Convention. Check out their Twitter and Facebook (and the Twitter hashtag). It was great to attend keynotes and sessions, network with colleagues, and walk through the vendor area. A highlight of this year was that I was able to attend with my wife, who is currently teaching grade three.

It was very interesting to hear Mohamed Fahmy talk about his experiences being imprisoned in Egypt, and about the importance of the media and journalism (Media in the Age of Terror: How the War on Terror Became a War on Journalism). He is a very engaging speaker.

I also attended a session by Kathy Worobec from the Alberta Council for Environmental Education on "How can Alberta Schools show climate leadership?". It was good to hear about, and discuss, projects that schools have been, and can be, involved in.

Next I attended a physics session, even though I'm no longer a physics teacher. However since it was about astronomy (Black Holes DON'T S**k) it is also applicable to grade six science. Great session, very interesting. And I knew the presenters, (Laura Pankratz and Jeff Goldie) so it was good to see them.

After lunch I attended some of the session "Minimalism in the Classroom" by Julianne Harvey that my wife was also attending. I liked what she had to say about simplifying our classroom environments "to improve student concentration and focus".

The last session I attended on Thursday was Amber MacArthur's "Cybersecurity & The Next Generation: 10 Steps to Privacy, Safety, and Citizenship". I last heard her speak many years ago at an ATLE conference, and she always has good ideas and is able to articulate the importance of many issues in technology. My favourite quote from her was something like "if you have time to know who is winning in 'The Bachelor' then you have time to check out some of the apps your kids are using."

Friday started with a session entitled "Stop working harder than your students" that I went to with my wife. It was very good, and I came away with a lot of ideas from Pierre Poulin and Philippe Bresee. One idea that I have implemented already, although it was already in the back of my mind, was a class government. This ties in nicely with democracy in grade six social studies, and gives students responsibilities and autonomy. I also liked the classroom layout design tool they demonstrated, Classroom Architect.

Following that that was my session entitled "You Can Program, and Kids Can Too". Unfortunately since it was in a venue that was both new to the convention this year and required some outdoor walking, fewer than half of the people that added it to their sched.com schedule actually attended. There were enough people for interesting questions and interactions, however, and even if a few people thought it was valuable then it was worthwhile.

After a longer lunch and more time in the vendor hall, I looked in on a couple of other sessions but only stayed for the entirety of "Entitlementality (And How to Teach Against It)" by Joel Hilchey. He talked about how students, and teachers, and in fact most people seem to have developed a mentality of entitlement. As an example, they/we "expect exceptional results with minimal effort". To combat this, he suggests a "focus on relationships, gratitude, and citizenship." I'm going to try gratitude journaling with my students.

Despite having to drive and park downtown for two days, it was an excellent teachers' convention. I came away with a number of concrete "try this on Monday" ideas, some inspiration, and things to think about for the future. Teaching is a great profession.

Code for a Drawing Game

The other day my wife and kids played a drawing game called Who What Where Jr with some friends. Based on their description of the game mechanics, I wrote a little bit of Javascript that chooses a "who", a "what", and a "where" from columns in a Google Spreadsheet.

I guess it's not quite the same as the actual game, and it took us a while to come up with subjects, verbs, and locations, but we had some fun creating it and playing it. The next step would be to turn this into a web app, including some sort of mechanism for showing each player a different phrase before a timer starts.

Code is available on GitHub.

Class Group Formation With Student Choice and Algorithms

We needed to form new groups in my class of 28 students (seven groups of four), so I had the idea to allow some student choice. Students were able to choose six others that they would prefer to be with, and three others that they would prefer not be in a group with.

Each student is assigned a number from 1 to 28, and I generated possible combinations of 4 students chosen from those 28 (20 475 possible combinations).

Then I eliminated combinations that that contained a given student and a student that they indicated a preference for not being with, which narrowed it down to 7714 possible combinations.

From these 7714 combinations, I built sets of 28 unique students (seven groups of four with no repeating numbers in a set). This resulted in 259 possible class group configurations.

I then assigned points to those sets based on student preferences, one point for every "I want to be with ___" that was fulfilled. The set with the highest points was then chosen, and the numbers translated back into names.

That's just a broad overview of the algorithm design. Just for fun, I did different parts in Wolfram Cloud, Python, Javascript, and Excel.

Google Classroom Assignment Completion Leaderboard

I've been using Google Classroom to post a lot of assignments that students can work on at their own pace; some of them are optional assignments, but most are required. We also have incentives set up for milestones such as 500 assignments completed by the class.

Rather than having to go through each assignment and see how many have been completed, and how many each student has completed, I've written a script that logs that information to a Google Spreadsheet. In case you'd like to do the same, here's the code and some basic instructions on how to set it up for yourself.

1. Create a Google spreadsheet with a list of student email addresses in column A starting at row 2.
2. Rename the sheet Achievements (or change line 17 of the code below).
3. Under the Tools menu choose Script editor and paste in the code below.
4. Follow the directions at https://developers.google.com/classroom/quickstart/apps-script to authorize your script.
5. Run (play) the function listCourses to find the courseId for the course that you want to run this on
6. Set up a trigger to run the function countClassroomAssignments() every morning or every week.

My Classroom Technologies

In my grade six classroom we have been using a number of different educational technologies, including hardware, software, and web-based tools.

Our main hardware platform is a set of Dell Latitude E6410 laptops. Since these are fairly old machines, we have reimaged them with Lubuntu, a lightweight Linux distribution that makes them quite usable. We have a charging cart, extra batteries, and an external battery charger.

On these laptops we have installed the Chrome web browser (in addition to the included Firefox), Audacity for audio recording, Cheese for taking photos and videos, and MinecraftEdu.

Also in the classroom we have two Raspberry Pi computers running KanoOS for computational thinking activities, and a few older gaming consoles for indoor recesses, motivation, and esports (a subject for another post).

We have access to Chromebooks, iPads, tripods (with iPad brackets), microphones (with USB cables and lightning adapters), green/blue screens, a GoPro HERO Session camera, Mac mini computers, Lego Mindstorms EV3 robot kits, and programmable Parrot Rolling Spider drones.

Our web-based tools include:
Google Classroom - assignments and online interactions, and guardian email summaries
Google Sites - hosts our class website
Remind - communicating with my students' grown-ups
Classcraft - a gamified behaviour management system
Mathletics - math practice
Math Live - interactive math lessons
Prodigy - chocolate-covered broccoli math practice
Newsela - news and non-fiction at adjustable reading levels
Duolingo - French language learning
Kids A-Z (Raz-Kids) - optional reading (ebooks and audiobooks)
Code Combat - coding and computational thinking activities

And of course we use other platforms for occasional assignments, such as Marvel's Comic Creator or Weebly. We'll also be trying many other tools throughout the year. For the most part, though, we are not focusing on learning tools, but rather learning with the tools.

Virtual Reality in Education

Apart from artificially intelligent assistants, I think virtual reality technologies (and the related technologies of augmented reality) are one of the next big things in education. Not as in "flavour of the week", but rather things that can make a significant impact on learning and engagement. This post will just scratch the surface, and hopefully spark some exploration.

You may have heard of, or used, virtual reality (VR) headsets that are based on mobile devices, such as Cardboard, Gear VR, or innumerable other headsets with similar designs. There are even specifically educational developments for these, such as Google Expeditions.

However I'm even more excited about more immersive and interactive VR experiences that can be had with hardware designed for video games. Of course they're somewhat more expensive, but you may be able to justify it based on the fact that the computers that run them can also be used for other tasks such as media production. Or if your school has a video game club or team, there are some VR hardware options coming out for consoles this year, but many of the education-applicable software and simulations won't be available for them.

At this point the two main options for computer-based VR are Vive and Rift. Both are in the neighbourhood of $1000, plus you need a decent gaming computer (which has gotten cheaper recently). While the Rift is, for now, primarily designed for sitting experiences, you'll likely want some space for room-scale experiences.

Okay, on to some educational applications.

Similar to mobile-based headsets, students will be able to view and sometimes interact with more and more 3D and 360 content that is being developed. More than just virtual field trips, this will allow students to experience things that are inaccessible or impossible in physical reality.

If you teach art or 3D design, check out Tilt Brush. It's somewhere between painting and sculpting. When I first used a pressure-sensitive stylus I was inspired to become a better artist, Tilt Brush took that feeling one step farther.

In grade six science we study flight, there are a number of interesting flight simulators available such as Fly Inside, Digital Combat Simulator, and War Thunder. Which reminds me, I need to check out DRL FPV simulator for virtual drone racing.

There are also a number of therapeutic applications of VR being developed. I'm interested to see if and how we can implement some of these in education.

And we continue to see interactive simulations being developed for consumers or professionals that can be implemented in, or adapted to, learning in school. But of course the biggest potential comes from empowering students to craft their own virtual reality experiences.

Open Data and Coding Project for Grade Six Social Studies and Math

I've recently put together a project-based learning challenge related to Alberta Education's grade six curriculum for social studies and mathematics. It involves open data released by governments, and coding-based graphing. Feel free to use it however you see fit, and let me know if there's anything that could be tweaked or improved.

The essential question is, "What data are available from governments, what use can we make of it, and what are some other things we would like to know?"

Use data from data.strathcona.ca, data.edmonton.ca, open.alberta.ca, open.canada.ca, or somewhere else to:

1. Construct a line graph of some statistic over time using HighCharts code from one of these examples: frequency of baby names or population of Sherwood Park and
1. describe the trend or trends in the data and brainstorm reasons
2. hypothesize what those data might look like in the future, and why
3. investigate how those data were collected
2. Assemble a map of essential (or interesting) services provided by Strathcona County, the City of Edmonton, and/or Alberta (e.g. this one) and
1. compare how these are different in urban versus rural areas
2. explain why you think that level of government is responsible for those services
3. propose how the public could get involved in the expansion of those services
3. Design a questionnaire to solicit opinions of other students, staff, and parents about either or both of the previous challenges.
4. Write and send a letter to an elected official describing either or both of:
1. your findings from one or more of the previous challenges
2. suggestions for data sets that could or should be available (e.g. spending or locations).

I've created two jsfiddle starting points for students to graph data:

http://jsfiddle.net/misterhay/2LL638v4/

https://jsfiddle.net/misterhay/skky17gu/

and a map they can use as an example of displaying geographic data:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@53.6277799,-113.3259701,10z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!6m1!1s1tRWTjGzElTe2l5vo981zgWZQBE8

The curricular outcomes that would likely relate to students' projects are:

Social Studies:

Benchmark Skills and Processes:

Dimensions of Thinking:

critical thinking and creative thinking: assess significant local and current affairs from a variety of sources, with a focus on examining bias and distinguishing fact from opinion

historical thinking: use primary sources to broaden understanding of historical events and issues

geographic thinking: construct and interpret various types of maps (i.e., historical, physical, political maps) to broaden understanding of topics being studied

decision making and problem solving: propose and apply new ideas, strategies and options, supported with facts and reasons, to contribute to decision making and problem solving

Research for Deliberative Inquiry:

research and information: determine the reliability of information, filtering for point of view and bias

6.1: Citizens Participating in Decision Making

General Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding and appreciation of the dynamic relationship between governments and citizens as they engage in the democratic process.

6.1.4 - analyze the structure and functions of local governments in Alberta by exploring and reflecting upon the following questions and issues:

How are representatives chosen to form a local government (i.e., electoral process)?

What are the responsibilities of local governments (i.e., bylaws, taxes, services)?

How are local governments structured differently in rural and urban settings?

What role is played by school boards (i.e., public, separate, Francophone) within local communities?

6.1.6 - analyze how individuals, groups and associations within a community impact decision making of local and provincial governments by exploring and reflecting upon the following questions and issues:

How can individuals, groups and associations within a community participate in the decision-making process regarding current events or issues (i.e., lobbying, petitioning, organizing and attending local meetings and rallies, contacting elected representatives)?

How do associations such as the Association canadienne-française de l'Alberta (ACFA), the Métis Nation of Alberta Association (MNAA) and the First Nations Authorities (FNA) provide their members with a voice, at local and provincial levels, exercising historical and constitutional rights?

In what ways do elected officials demonstrate their accountability to the electorate (e.g., respond to constituents, participate in local events, represent and express in government meetings the concerns of constituents)?

Math:

Statistics & Probability - Data Analysis

General Outcome: Collect, display and analyze data to solve problems.

Specific Outcome 1: Create, label and interpret line graphs to draw conclusions.

Communication | Connections | Problem Solving | Reasoning | Visualization

Specific Outcome 2: Select, justify and use appropriate methods of collecting data, including:

Questionnaires, Experiments, Databases, Electronic media.

[ICT: C4 - 2.2, C6 - 2.2, C7 - 2.1, P2 - 2.1, P2 - 2.2]

Specific Outcome 3: Graph collected data, and analyze the graph to solve problems.