Learning 2 it's true it is all about the learning

In 2010 I had just started teaching overseas and was based in Suzhou (just outside of Shanghai). I had a job as the Middle school Tech integrator. I had only been at the school for two months when the school had the foresight to send me to Shanghai for Learning2.

I had attended large edtech conferences in Australia, but they were the usual keynote speakers and workshop type conferences nothing innovative, new or exciting. Learning2 was different, I was placed in a cohort with people in similar positions to me (great for networking). There was also plenty of time to network and the quality of the workshops was second to none, (I even got to meet some of my edtech heroes) with some really big names and the unconferences were completely new and intriguing. It was conference like no other and upon leaving I thought I am going to the next one no matter what (and hopefully bringing some more teachers with me). It was worth going just for the networking.

I was lucky enough to attend the next 6 learning 2's and presented a variety of 1 hour workshops. I missed Learning 2's return to Shanghai in 2017, (I had already spent my PD budget and had a few other goals that year.

In 2019 applied to be a L2 Leader and was fortunate enough to get the call up. This was something I was keen to do since attending L2 2012 in Beijing where 2 hr extended sessions were first run and the workshop leaders gave pecha kucha talks. At each L2 since then I thought I would love to be up there in front of a large crowd and give a more in depth workshop.

After being a tech coach for 8 years overseas (and a few years in Australia before that) I had presented at a heap of conferences, workshops and school events and had even given a 12 minute TED style talk to over 1800 Heads of schools at the IB world conference in Singapore. I had ticked a few boxes and was a fairly confident presenter. Regardless I was still excited to be a L2 leader and I was going to Japan. I knew the calibre of the sessions and the rigour of the L2 talks.

From my first acceptance email, this was different, I had to sign a contract and commit to a process (including a three week online training course) rather than just showing up and running a one or two hour session. The organisers were constantly in contact and the whole process was super professional.

I had a fairly good idea of what my extended session (AR and VR creation tools) was going to look like. I had done my Google Innovator project on this topic and had already presented at Edtech summits, 21CLHK and the AIMS conference in Malaysia on exactly this topic with good feedback. I also had a couple of ideas for a L2 talk.

Then the pre conference training started and everything changed.

I loved the fact that my preconceptions were challenged and that I had to clearly articulate a set of goals and objectives for my extended session. It made me rethink things and empathise with my learners (that people who would attend my session). The three week online course also allowed me to get to know the other leaders and revisit was L2 and adult learning was all about.

I already felt that I was better prepared for my session than any other workshop I had ever run. Part of the process of being a L2 leader is that you spend a couple of days before the conference starts training and refining your presentation and talk. I was looking forward to working with some super professional coaches and picking the brains of people who know what they are talking about.

The onsite training and planning time was like nothing I had done before, having time to practice my L2 talk and to work with other educators hearing what they were doing and watching them prepare, share and collaborate was one of the best learning experiences of my teaching career. Everyone was focussed on the conference and how to make it great for the participants.

The social aspect was also second to none, a great opportunity to catch up with friends and meet new and dynamic people in a relaxed setting helped build bonds and foster new friendships. I was already getting so much out of this conference before it even started.

Once we did start I felt confident, ready and couldn't wait to get my participants playing with and creating their own AR and VR experiences and I felt like I was giving them a variety of tools and strategies they could take back to their classrooms straight away.

My first two and a half hour extended session went so quickly and it was refreshing to not have to rush through activities and give the participants time to explore, play and create.

Even better though was that an hour after we finished we had in our hands the feedback from participants and the L2 leaders as a team debriefed our sessions and shared successes and failures in a safe environment with the sole purpose of improving ourselves. Like having time before the conference to acclimatise and prepare this immediate feedback and debrief time was new for me and was probably the most valuable part of presenting at the conference. Other times I had presented I might get a spreadsheet back a week later with some scores and ideas on how to improve, not as useful as the immediate L2 feedback and debrief.

Then I got to do my new and improved session again acting on the feedback, although it must have been OK the first time because I had a few people come to me and ask if they could sneak into my second session because they heard from other people how good it was the first time round. Needless to say my feedback scores were even higher the second time.

Finally it was my turn to get up on stage, My L2 talk had been chosen to be done on the last night as part of the closing, talk about pressure. I really couldn't relax and unwind until I was all done. I was nervous as could be, but still had a heap of fun presenting and enjoyed the fact that I had opportunities to workshop my talk and even practice on stage before I did it.

(photo credit to Dave Caleb - a fellow L2 leader)

I got some good feedback, had lots of fun and learnt so much about myself as a learner and presenter.

The entire process (and yes it is a process and not just an event) of being a Learning2 leader was one of the most valuable learning experiences I have had as an educator. Simple things like making a video to advertise my session helped me to clarify my thoughts and ideas. I also had a blast and made a heap of great friends.

It is true that Learning2 is all about the learning

Google Innovator (still working on it)

It has been a year since the Sydney 17 Google Innovator Academy and talking to many of my fellow #syd17 alumni the common theme is that things are going slow. Honestly the same is true for me, although in the last couple of months I have managed to get a bit of momentum.

A couple of things have happened to help get me moving including

I have led teacher workshops at various conferences on how to get students creating AR and VR experiences, including 21st Century Learning in Hong Kong, the AIMS conference in KL, an apple innovation day as well as teachmeet KL and staff meetings and PD sessions here at school.

I was also asked to speak at the IB Heads world conference, just a small group of 1800 heads of schools and teachers from IB schools all over the world.

The most important thing I have been doing is testing out ideas and lessons with real life students here at school. I have been pushing AR and VR, especially AR and VR creation as an alternative to posters and wasteful paper displays that get pulled down a week later and can't be shared or stored for other people to see in the future.

We have had students playing with VR and AR all over the school including

Early years students using a merge cube to hold a beating heart or a brain when learning about body systems

Grade 3 students using Metaverse to create interactive AR experiences about a body system they have researched

Grade 4 students have been using Google Streetview to explore different cities and communities around the world

Grade 5 students have been using Google Expeditions to explore the effect that humans have on the rainforest

Grade 5 have also created AR and VR experiences for their PYP exhibition, several students used Metaverse to create AR experiences including a bullying simulation where participants were given scenarios and they had to decide what to do. Other students use roundme.com to create their own VR experiences, mostly to increase empathy and show their understanding by creating VR tours of the ocean and the rainforest.

In secondary school we have been using AR and VR in design classes, students were given the design problem of creating an AR or VR experience for someone at school. We explored several tools for creating VR and AR experiences including roundme.com, metaverse, creating 360 videos hosted on youtube and cospaces. (Google expeditions tour creator wasn't yet released)

The students created some incredible experiences including

• VR school tours 
• AR Fire Drill experience
• VR tour of the school Gym, with instructional videos
• a series of VR tours for our Grade 4 students on different types of religions
• VR tour comparing dive locations (reefs) around the world

While none of these are perfect or even in a format that can be published (yet!) they are a good start and the students came up with creative ideas. I even had several students teach themselves how to use the unity game engine to create AR experiences.

Now that Tour Creator has come out of beta, we have started playing with that as a student creation tool. I have some projects for students in mind and can't wait to get back into it.

My final product for my Innovation Project is my edu-create.com website, which is a selection of creation resources for teachers and students, including a database of students submitted experiences where students, teachers and parents can showcase all the cool things they have made using VR and AR. It is still being built but I hope to have it up and running before the EdTechTeam Singapore summit.

This should prove to be a great resource for teachers to get ideas on how to get students creating AR and VR experiences and a place where students can showcase the incredible work they are doing.

On the weekend I watched the Innovation Program Sydney Cohort showcase

And this really got me motivated to finish my project and get this thing running.

While watching this one of the things that stuck with me was when Les reminded us to fail often and fail fast, that is something I haven't been doing I have been living with the fear that maybe my site won't work, no one will use it, someone will do it before me. That is going to change now, I am going to get this site up and running and if need be I will fail, very fast and then innovate and modify and try it all again.

Watch this space.

Round ME - create your own VR Tours

Google has just launched its Expeditions creator BETA program that allows students and teachers to create their own Google Expeditions.

According to Google
"One of the top requests we’ve heard from teachers and students is the ability to create their own Expeditions. Today, we are excited to announce a beta program that allows schools and educators to do just that. Classrooms will be able to create immersive tours of the world around them -- their classrooms, their schools, their communities."

I have signed up for the BETA program, I can't wait and I hope we get to test it out. Until then though we will continue creating our own Google Expeditions via the website roundme.com

Make your own Google Expeditions or even better get your students creating VR tours

roundme is really cool and very easy to use, it has heaps of possibilities for moving students from consumption to creation (one of my favourite things to do and right at the top of Blooms revised Taxonomy)

Creation of VR tours is a very simple process

Anyone can upload 360 degree images by dragging and dropping the image on to the browser window, with the free version of roundme, you can upload up to 15 images a week (which is plenty)

To get 360 degree images / photospheres you can use a 360 camera, the Streeview app on a phone or download Streetview images from the website istreetview.com.  See here for detailed instructions. 

Sometimes when you download Google Streetview images the image is too large, Roundme has a photo limit of 10000 X 5000 pixels. To change the size of the image on my Mac I used ColorSync Utility which allows you to set the pixel size of an image to the exact proportions you want while keeping the scale the same. I am sure there are equivalent programs on Windows or Chrome.

Once the photospheres are uploaded you can then add content to the 360 photos including Youtube videos, images, text and links to other 360 images thus creating a tour.

Press a button to publish it and share the link.

There you have it, the teacher or even better the students created Google Expedition / VR tour.

Here is an example of the roundme that one of our grade 5 teachers created so his class could check out their camp location before they went on camp.

How can I use this in my class?

We have been exploring using student created VR tours in the following ways.

• Art students create a virtual art gallery of their creations, this could include videos, images and a reflection on each piece.
• Science students can create virtual tours of inside the human body, explaining different parts and their jobs.
• PE students use a 360 image of a Soccer field and then annotate it to explain who is in position and what each player should do next.
• Social Studies students create virtual tours of modern buildings, ancient ruins or geographical features with their own embedded explanations including videos.
• Host Nation students explain the cultural significance of buildings and areas around Kuala Lumpur.
• English students retell a story or trace a journey using different 360 images to create a tour of literary novels they have been reading. 
• Elementary students can retell a fairy tale or make a 3D tour version of their own stories
• Maths students create a virtual problem wall, a 360 image filled with problems, they then add hotspots with links to the solutions (videos, written or images).
• Design students have been creating VR and AR resources for teachers in the school, they had to pick a teachers and ask them what type of resource they wanted and then create it for them.
• English students can create VR versions of their stories, with each location being a different 360 image 

We have only just started this process and I feel like we have only scraped the top of the iceberg, so to speak. Maybe next I will make a VR tour of all the different VR experiences our students have created.

The really easy way to make your own 360 videos

If you (or even better your students) want to create their own 360 degree videos with nothing more than a computer check this out.

Some of our students are using this to
- create virtual tours of important buildings in Malaysia
- display their poetry in a 360 world - students choose the location and read the poetry
- explain the different things they see in an ecosystem or different parts of a structure
- reflect on an excursion or field trip
- share their understanding of a geographical feature
- create a "where am I puzzle" for their classmates (great for ESOL learners)

The really easy cheats way to make your own 360 videos with nothing more than a computer

1. download a Google Streetview photosphere (360 image)

The first thing you want to do is find and download a 360 degree image, To do this we used Street View Panorama downloader. (Software here) This nifty little program allows you to download Google Streetview panoramas.

Searching on streetview downloader isn't great (nor very accurate), so I find it better to find the location on Google Maps and then load the panorama into the downloader.

To download the panorama you copy the Panorama ID into the downloader program, select the download location and name and hitting the download button.

make sure you label the panorama as from Google Street View and give the correct image credit.

2. Import the image into iMovie.

(or any other movie editing software)
Once the panorama is in iMovie make sure you change the cropping to fit, so that it doesn't cut off any of the 360 image.

You can then add titles and a voice over, you can even have multiple panoramas so that it acts more like a tour.

Adding the voice over is the big win for us, we want students describing features in the panorama or explaining what is happening while someone watches the 360 video. Students can also create virtual tours with themselves as the guides.

We then export the movie, making sure to keep the aspect ratio in tact, so that when youtube detects it as a 360 video everything is there.

3. Add 360 video metadata to your video

To ensure your video is turned into a 360 video on youtube, I find it is best to follow these instructions to add the 360 metadata (video information) to your video.

You download a small piece of software (spacial media metadata injector) which adds the information to your video

It is a simple as opening the video and pressing the inject metadata button. (it is also very quick)

Once you have the video with the injected metadata, you can .....

4 Upload it to Youtube

Once you upload the video, youtube should detect it as a 360 video. It can now be viewed like any other 360 video on a computer, tablet or with Google cardboard.

This is also a handy way to add music and titles to student created 360 videos. It would also be cool to use green screen and have a avatar (you could use gabsee or snapchat) talking as people scroll around the 360 video.