Teaching Staff how to be different

Staff Differentiation Workshop

Friday a call goes out that we need some more presenters for some differentiation workshops next Tuesday. My plan was to attend some PD from other staff rather than lead it.

Oh Well you do what you need to do.

A quick rush job was needed..... Differentiation (not the algebraic kind) is something I think I do pretty well, but what tech angle could I use to tackle it?

The more I though about it all I really wanted to do was to model differentiation rather than lecture for 50 minutes, so it really didn't matter what tools I used. I have heard so many teachers complain that they had been to PD or sessions on differentiation that were not differentiated......

I chose to create a Hyper Doc with two different streams on investigation that the teachers could work through.

Doc available here

We started by doing a directions quiz A bit like this one  This is something I like doing with students to highlight the importance of following directions correctly. It also works with teachers.

I then introduced the Hyperdoc and explained how it worked. The teachers all had to do the first task, which was an Edpuzzle (Edpuzzle allows you to add questions, commentary and notes to any video) lesson on using differentiated instruction to support all learners .

Once the teachers finished the interactive lesson they could then explore and choose any of the activities on the Doc. One side of the doc allowed learners to explore Ed Puzzle and the other side allowed them to explore Hyperdocs. The teachers could pick and choose the activities they were interested in, they wanted to do or they needed to. This allowed teachers to work at their own level, their own speed or how they wanted (individually, groups) it was completely up to them. 

Hopefully modelling a way to differentiate in their classes

The whole process worked, with lots of positive feedback. The most interesting part was the teachers who didn't like having to be learners. I encouraged everyone to press buttons, find the help section, Google questions and just try things. 

Some people just couldn't, they constantly asked for help 'What do I press?' 'How do I do this?' 'Where are the video?' It took a lot of patience and self control to calmly point to the section of the screen with the big question mark. Students can be a lot easier to teach.

I realised that this sort of PD is something that we need to do more of, not only do students need to know how to learn and find answers for themselves but so do teachers, and parents and office staff. Like anything the more they do it the better they will get.

Breakout

Wow, what a breakout year it has been (excuse the pun).

It was only this time last year that I first attended a breakout.edu session at the KL GAFE summit. I had heard about escape rooms, I was even invited to have a go (if only I didn't have small children). I love puzzles and challenges so breakout.edu was worth a look.

Wow, it was an instant hit, I love it and loved the possibilities. There was so much potential to use it in any subject area.

My challenge was, how was I going to introduce it to IGBIS? It ended up being easier than I thought, we had a small team of dedicated teachers who had the same breakout experience as me. They were just as excited as me and together we vowed to give it a go. We got some locks and boxes, we started putting together our own breakout kit.

One teacher +Steven Harvey started doing it with his grade four class, once again an instant hit. The kids didn't solve their first breakout but they loved it and they and the teacher learnt so much about teamwork.

Next I helped another teacher plan and modify a simple machines breakout with a grade one class. It was exciting to prove that even 6yr olds could work together and solve puzzles and problems.

To give the staff a breakout.edu experience I developed and ran a quick 15 minute breakout and hosted it five days in a row at lunchtime in a small room off the staffroom.

That way people could come when they didn't have duty or had a spare lunch break. Five lunches the same breakout every day. Completely voluntary and lots of fun. A third of the staff attended these lunchtime breakout sessions.

Then we went online (like our own version of the breakout.edu homework). I developed an online breakout using Google Forms. The questions were compulsory and used data validation so the participant couldn't progress until they got the code correct

On Monday I posted it on the daily notices and let the teachers try and work it out on their own. It didn't take long for teams to self organise and work together. Groups of people were seen sitting around a computer in the lunchroom trying to solve a nasty difficult puzzle. Yep some ingenious nerdy types worked out how to hack the Google form but that didn't matter, we were all learning as we went. I learnt how to hack a Google form

Then is started, teachers in secondary started doing breakouts for all sorts of subject areas and the elementary teachers kept on breaking out.

I saw or was part of

• a just for fun breakout session with grade 4 
• a transition breakout for grade 5 to get them ready for secondary school
• a grade 6 cyber safety breakout 
• a grade 11 Psychology breakout
• a grade 1 breakout that was part of a field trip learning about maps. 
• grade 8 maths breakouts
• a staff breakout for new teachers to introduce them to the systems we use at school

Teachers borrowed the gear to take home and host breakout birthday parties.

As more people used the gear, more people purchased more locks and boxes, different types of locks. People found interesting puzzle and code sites. The breakout beast grew and grew.

We have had cooperative breakout lessons, competitive breakout lessons and soon parent breakout lessons.

The best thing about breakout is that the students have to work cooperatively and independently and the teacher has to get out of the way and let the learning happen. Some of them even get an understanding that learning can happen without them up the front lecturing all the time.

I have presented breakout.edu at learning 2, at the Aims conference and will soon be presenting it at the Deep learning conference.

I love Breakout.edu,
I love the way it

• turns learning on it's head
• makes students self organise and problem solve
• forces the teacher into the background as an observer
• allows kids to reflect on their learning and their team work
• gives students the opportunity to think laterally
• is lots of FUN

How we do Activities (the 2016 version)

The way we have been running our school activities and athletics has been evolving over the past two years.

We started with a paper system in 2010 but quickly started using Google Forms, Sites, Docs and Sheets.

Since then we have learnt a bit (A LOT) and made a few changes, used a few different apps and add ons, improved some things and simplified others. We have new staff, some staff have left. Our process isn't perfect and it still has scope for improvement. It seems like this little project will always be in beta, which is fine, better than fine, it is important to always be in beta.

So what has changed? How are we doing things now and how are we going to do things in the future?

We still have an activities Google Account 'activities@igbis.edu.my' that all sites, forms and documents are created through. That way the resources are not tied to a teacher but to a role. It also means any emails that are sent are sent from activities@igbis.edu.my. We forward all emails sent to this address to our actual activities coordinator. This has been very useful because in three years we have had three different activities coordinators and this year the role has been shared.

We still have our activities Google Site which has now also turned into out activities and athletics blog

We still have a page with all the activities and sign ups using a Google form embedded into the page.

How has the process changed?

This is what we do now.

1. two to three weeks before student and parent sign up, teachers fill out a Google form letting the activities coordinator know what activities they want to be a part of. The activities coordinator uses this information to create the student / parent Google form sign up. They also use the data 'using the save as doc Google sheets add on to create a list of all available activities. This list is posted on the site as an embedded Google doc, that can be modified

The site is sent to parents and is available on our school splash (launch page) which is available from the school website.

2. The Google form is embedded on the Activities site and students (secondary) and parents (elementary) can sign up for their activities. Each day and time (morning, lunchtime, afternoon) has a drop down menu to prevent students from signing up for multiple activities on the same day. For a while the form had four pages (one for each section of the school) this made sorting the data complicated. We now have two pages (Elementary and Secondary). Next we will probably go back to one and make sure we are careful about how we name our activities on the Google Form.

3. We used to use Ultradox trigger to automatically generate emails to the students and parents, now we use 'Form Mule' to automatically generate the emails. It is free, easier to use and allows us to send more emails per day (up to 1500).

4. The form has two pages, one for elementary activities and one for secondary. There are also multiple options on days with before school, lunchtime and after school activities. To generate a summary of what each student signed up for on each day I used the concatenate function in Google Sheets

This gave us a nice summary column for each day which made the email to parents and students easier to create. We have a one page template which contains a table.

It is very important that we are careful and deliberate about how we name the activities. If the activity is in both secondary and elementary they must exactly the same name. If an activity is on multiple days this needs to be indicated in the name (usually the day of the week in brackets after the name "swimming (M)". We also need to label paid activities. All of this labeling is very important when we start sorting and organising the data.

Warning from now on some parts can get a bit tech heavy. This link takes you to an example Google Sheet where you can play along or copy formulas.

5. In Elementary the parents sign up themselves, so they know what their children have signed up for. 

In Secondary the students sign up and we wanted a way to let the parents know what their kids have signed up for. In the past we asked students to add their parents email address, this was problematic because there was no consistency with email addresses (people didn't use their school email) or the email address was typed incorrectly. 

To solve this problem we used the VLOOKUP function, I have another google sheet (downloaded and modified from Managebac) with the student email addresses and parent email addresses. The function below will search my other sheet 'list of parents and students' looking for the student email address (this came from the form automatically as the students had to be signed in to complete it) it then returns the value next to the student name (which is the parent email addresses)

Then I use the concatenate function to combine the student email address and the parent email address into a single value in a new column. The comma allows multiple email addresses to be used at once.

This new value is then used by Form Mule as the email address to send the personalised email to. This personalised email uses the data from step 4 in a table to give the students and parents a summary of what has been signed up for.

Form mule is then set up to send the email on form submit.

Students sign up via the form and an automatic email is sent to them and to their parents letting them know what they have signed up for.

Organising the data

6. Once the sign ups have closed, the activity coordinator then needs to organise the data and decide what activities can run and what can not.

We used to use a query to send the data to a new sheet, we still do this to generate a list of students who need bus transport

Making 50 new sheets for each activity is time consuming, so now I

use this Array formula function to generate a list of unique values from my form responses, which is a list of all the activities that have been signed up for.

Then using data validation I create a drop down menu in a new sheet

I then set up the new sheet with the headings I want.

Using this following formula combines a query with the drop menu, so now you have an interactive list where you can select the activity and then it returns a list of all student who signed up for the activity. Decisions can be made about the activity runs or if extra space or staff are needed. It is interactive and updates as new responses come in (if the form is still open and sign ups have not closed)

The activities coordinator can then copy and paste (making sure to paste values only) to a new sheet to create any list of students signed up for activities that he or she likes.

We then do the same thing for grade level so teachers or admin can search for students in their grade and see what they signed up for.

An example spreadsheet with all the formulas can be found here so you can copy and paste and create your own magic.

Sending out a final confirmation email (and invoices)

7. If students need to be removed from activities because the activity is not running, they change their mind or the activity is  over subscribed, they can be taken directly out of the original form responses sheet. This then creates our master list of all activities that are running.

This master list than then be used with the above drop down menus to make an interactive list for teachers.

The coordinator drafts an acceptance email that tells students and parents which activities they have been accepted in and any fees they have to pay (for paid activities). This includes links to sport websites, agreements or attendance guidelines.

We have some paid activities and the email acts as our invoice. To generate the amount students need to pay I copied the list of activities and then did a find and replace to replace the name of the activity with the amount, then by summing up the amounts we had a total column.

When then use Form Mule again using the acceptance template to send out the final acceptance email. This time we use the send conditions and have two separate templates. One for a student who has paid activities and owes money (condition is total amount column is null) and one for students who don't have paid activities (condition is total amount column is not null). This allows us to personalize the email even further.

These emails can be sent in bulk rather than being sent on form submit with the press of a button.

8. The activities coordinator then created attendance lists in Google Sheets (by copying and pasting from the drop down menus) and shared this with all staff and put it on the activities website (in the past we asked staff to create their own) that way anyone who has viewing or editing rights can see at a glance who is at activities.

Teachers are encouraged to make a repeating calendar event with a link to the attendance sheet. That way they get a pop up reminder (on their computer / iPad / Phone) that reminds them they need to take attendance with a direct link to the attendance sheet. One click and they are ready to take attendance.

We haven't used the awesome table on the site any more because we now have the interactive sheets and they weren't used that much.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thats_all_folks.svg

We have improved and changed how we do activities but we still have room for improvement. I am really happy with the way the process has evolved and survived three different coordinators.

The three major changes from 2010 are

• using Form Mule instead of Yet another Mail Merge, 
• the introduction of email invoices and interactive sheets
• automation of adding parent school email addresses to the student email addresses in secondary. 

In my last post there were a few things I wanted to change

here they are in blue below

Some improvements that we already know we need / want include

• parent Google accounts to allow them to log into our domain (Done)
• links on the school web page / creation of a splash page for students / staff / parents (Done)
• a workflow / diagram so all parties know the procedures including dates for each stage of the process (Done, this blog post?)
• a streamlined attendance function (Maybe, still some work to do)
• an automated email gets sent to the activities coordinator when students are marked absent. (Not yet)
• a way for students / parents to find out what activities they have signed up for (Not yet, maybe we do need the awesome table although we don't want parents to see other kids activity sign ups)

The other improvements we still want to see include

• a drop down list for bus locations
• a simple form (a single page with no repeating questions) to make the sorting of data easier
• generation of email lists so teachers can easily email all the students in their activity
• a link in the email allowing students or parents to modify or edit their sign ups (so they can do it themselves. 

The Amazing Race

This year, for my usual start of year session with staff I was tasked with reminding the staff some of the systems we use at school

• How to post daily notices
• Creating Google sites
• Using Google Photos
• Sharing links to PDF's hosted in their Google drive
• How to book meeting rooms
• add a help desk request

plus a few other common tasks that staff need to do with computers

I could have lectured and reminded the staff about all the school systems we have in place. I could have even done a really cool presentation Zen style presentation with my own photos and wowed them with my presentation skills.

Rather than lecture, I chose to model active inquiry-based learning. This involved more work for me, but the results were much more effective and therefore rewarding.

I got the idea from Wesley Przybyoski at the Google Apps Summit in KL. Wes' Amazing Race Site

I developed and facilitated a Google Apps Amazing Race Challenge, whereby staff teams completed a series of online challenges; as they completed each challenge they submitted their product and were sent to the next location / challenge. This continued until they finished racing around the “world”.

The Process

I first posted a link to a Google Form (that was the sign up), on the introductory slideshow. I then used the Form Ranger Google forms add on and the data from the sign up form to populate a drop down question in the next 7 google forms so that the team name would be consistent. Form ranger will take data from a Google Sheet and auto-populate questions in a Google Form. So it is great for creating dynamic interactive forms where the questions can change depending on other form submissions.

Once they completed the sign up form, (using the Form Mule add on) they were emailed the first challenge as a my maps link. You can set up custom emails using Form Mule that are activated once a form is completed.

I created 7 different MyMaps (Example map no 6). These maps contained the tasks that the staff had to complete. Each task had to be completed and a Google Form filled in with a link to the product as evidence they completed the challenge.

Once the staff completed the challenge (via a Google form) they were emailed the next challenge once again using Form Mule. They then got the next map with the next location and the next challenge.

This continued until they had completed all seven challenges. I commandeered two staff members to be the judges and recorders. They were given access to the spreadsheets and gave points depending on the accuracy of the answer, speed and extra points. These were then recorded on another spreadsheet which auto updated on a slide in the Google presentation.

The Result

I am sure someone won, I don't know who, it doesn't really matter. I do know that all the staff had to work together in teams and actually do the type of tasks they were expected to do on a daily or weekly basis at school. If they forgot how to do something they also had some contacts that they could call on that could show them how to do it

The staff loved it and participated fully, I even had one of our new teachers come up to me afterwards and say how she loved the fact that anything I presented was done in such a creative and interactive way. She said it was much better than the usual PD sessions she had attended.

During a debrief, many of the staff commented on how it was much better to do active hands on PD rather than listen to a lecture. A few even booked some coaching time with me to help them develop their own Amazing Race for their classes.

Book a tech coach

One of my priorities as a tech coach is to make myself available. Jut in time training is so much more valuable than just in case.

I manage to wedge myself into planning meetings, staff meetings, lunchtime conversations, corridor chats and spend lots of time popping into classrooms to see what the kids are doing. I have worked hard to be open and non judgemental when coaching. My easy going manner means that teachers are more than happy to chat to me in the staffroom or have me drop in on their classes.

I still need to make myself available for 1-1 coaching sessions, planning meetings, classroom visits or anything else a teacher may need. How do I do this?

I toyed with a couple of ideas, a Google Doc, appointment slots in a Google Calendar, finally I decided to use You Can Book me.

Why?

• it integrates with Google Apps (log in with your Google Account)
• appointments are sent directly to your calendar
• the booking sheet automatically updates
• you can set up limits on a booking time so you can have multiple people book the same time
• you can set up times on your calendar to say when you are available
• you can customise lots (emails, times, number of days to view, booking form)
• It looks really nice and it is easy to change the look
• it is free for the basic package (you can also get a not for profit education account)

It can be a bit fiddly to set up but I think the end result is worth it

Next I had to find a way to push it to teachers so they could easily find my booking calendar

I like these sort of resources to be available in multiple ways so my booking form can be found

• There is a link on my teacher resources site
• I include a link in the daily notices
• There is a link on our teacher splash page
• I have a link in my email signature

I am happy with the way the system is working, staff are using it (Teachers and Admin staff) and I know when people want to see me and what they want to do so if I need to I can prepare.

Tech Coach Tracking

No I am not talking about putting a GPS tracker on your tech coach to find out where s/he eats dinner or which bar they frequent.

I am talking about a tool or tools that a tech coach can track how they use their time. I used to get to the end of the day and think 'What did I do today?'. Sometimes a complete stranger will ask 'what do you do?' I have my elevator pitch but then I usually get some more detailed questions. I would also like some stats if one day the head of School or board asks me to justify my job or even worse my wife and kids ask 'Why are you so busy?'

I also wanted to get some hard data on how I use my time so I could become a better coach. Which type of support do I offer the most? How much time am I spending in  Elementary / Secondary? Are there better ways to get to more staff? How much time am I setting up systems or maintaining them? How much time do I spend on my own PD? How do these numbers change over time?

I started taking written notes, then transferred them to a Google Sheet, but they ended up being a heap of text that wasn't that useful. I wanted numbers, something I could make pretty graphs out of and track visually how much time I am spending on what.


My natural thought was to use a Google form to track all I do each day and use the graphs or create my own. How to set it up? I know that how the questions are set up is important for how you view or use the data. A checkbox will allow you to have two words in the one cell (which can be a pain), It can be hard to organise data if you use a grid.

I wanted to be able to enter what I did, how long I did it, where I did it (elementary, secondary, whole school) and maybe some notes on what it was.

I ended up using a form with seven pages so that I could enter the same type of data multiple times. I then thought about the things I usually (or sometimes did), with some adjusting and rethinking (especially when I remembered something or thought something might be useful) I came up with this list.

I then added some extra questions like school division (I work across the entire school), some notes, date and how much time spent.

I also added a finished radio button that allowed me to submit the form without having to get to the end of the form

You can't share Google forms to be view only, so I made a copy of the form and you can see it in action here

Example Google Form

It is pretty basic, but it is all I need. You will need to build your own version, if you want to do something similar. 

So now I have a Google form I fill out every day and then I get a series of three (hopefully soon to be more) interactive graphs that track what I do each day. It took a while and a heap of brain power but it was fun and I am finding it super useful.

Now for the fun
(it is also a bit complicated)

link to the response sheet with all the formulas etc

Once I got the data I had to work out how to make it useful. The form responses sheet came as a long row, with the selected date once in the row.

Because I wanted to use query language to auto sort my data I needed this data to be moved from a long horizontal row into five columns (date, amount of time spent, activity, notes and division). I also needed the date row which only appeared once in a row to be tagged or linked to each entry. That way I could sort and arrange the data (using a variety of functions and query language commands). I don't think it is possible to use multiple queries at the same time.

I am sure there is a clever way to do this, but the only solution I could find was to use the array formula function with a new function on row 1, 301, 601, 901 etc. (see sheet single col data)

'=arrayformula(data!B2:B299)' - this gives the date field (this stays the same for each new formula row 1, 301, 601 etc)

then in the next cell / column
'=arrayformula(data!H2:L299)' - this gives the data (time, activity, notes, division) from the original row (this needs to change for each new formula row 1, 301, 601 etc)

This drags the columns from the original sheet to a new sheet (see the sheet called single col data). It limits the number of responses to about 300 before you start getting errors, but because I am only tracking one year at a time it should give me plenty of scope. You could move the formulas to different rows to allow for more responses if you want.

Now that I have the data in a sheet with only five columns, I can start filtering and organising the data into a format that I can use.

Query Language


I am not an expert in query language by any means, I know a little, what I do know is how to search the web to find answers. That is what I did, here are some of the resources I used.

This video is a bit complicated but after watching it and working through it multiple times I managed to grab some lines of code that worked well

An excellent site to get the basics (and the complicated)

https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/reference#queryobjects

This guys seems to know everything about query language and using it with google sheets

http://yogi--anand-consulting.blogspot.my/

although sometimes the best way is to type your question in Google.

http://bfy.tw/2Xk1

Total Time Spent

(see total time spent tab)

'=query('Single col data'!A1:E,"Select C, Sum(B) GROUP by C")'

I created a new sheet and used the above query, column C is the type of activity and B is the time spent, this query finds all the like activities and sums the time spent, then groups them by the type of activity.

Once I had the data, I selected the columns (A&B) and inserted a chart (pie graph) so I could visually see how my time is spent over all the entries.

Split by Division

(see split by division tab)

I wanted a drop down to select the activity (supporting staff 1-1, in class support etc) and then see a chart of how much time is spent in each division.

I first created a new sheet with a list of the activities (see lists sheet) then on another sheet I used data validation to create a drop down so that I could select an activity.

Then in cell A2

'=query('Single col data'!A2:AP,"Select A,B,C,D,E Where C contains " & "'" & A1 & "'")'

The trick is " & "'" & A1 & "'"

which allows you to get your query from the validated cell.

I found this solution in a couple of places
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/31613423/google-spreadsheet-query-to-dropdown-list
http://yogi--anand-consulting.blogspot.my/2011/10/yogiuse-query-function-with-search.html

Once again I used the insert chart function to create my nice pie graphs.
This allows the tab (sheet) to be interactive, it will change according to the activity selected.

Date Range

Next I wanted to have an interactive tab where I could pick a date range and see my activity. Using the above video I found this query command, The guy in the video even shares his sheet so you can play with it.

'=query('Single col data'!A1:E, "Select A,B,C,D,E where A >= date """&TEXT(B2,"yyyy-mm-dd")&""" and A <= date """&TEXT(C2,"yyyy-mm-dd")&"""")'

I just copied it and used it, the start date is in B2 and the end date is in C2.
It worked great, once the cells B2 and C2 are recognised as Dates Google sheets even allows you to select dates from a calendar by double clicking on them.

Once again I inserted a chart which allowed me to build my pie graph.

Warning

One thing I found the hard way is that if you select a finish date before a start date, it messes up your spreadsheet big time. I got an error and couldn't delete the sheet and had to start again. I have since made a few copies just in case it happens again.

Track activities over time

The next thing I want to do is to be able to select an activity and then see a graph of how much time is spent on the activity over time. I would like to be able to see if there are times in the year when I spend more time maintaining systems, or supporting staff in departments, or visiting classes.

I haven't done this yet and I have a few ideas, I just need some time to play and explore.

Finally I cleaned up the spreadsheet and hid the columns I don't need, when I open my sheet I only display date range, time spent and split by division.

What Now

Now that I have all this information what do I do with it? Some of things I am noticing already

• 1-1 Staff support is my largest chunk of any week
• As the year progresses I am doing less setting up systems and maintenance and more 1-1 staff support
• I am spending more time working with Elementary staff than Secondary
• My hours spent at meetings has increased
• In class support is happening more in the Secondary
• I spend little to no time with non teaching staff

I need to now ask the why and how questions, why is this happening and how can I change things?

One positive is that this data now raises more questions.  

• How much of my time is reactive vs being proactive? 
• How can I better record drop ins? 
• Should I start approaching teachers or focus more on my booking system?
• Are there ways to outsource the maintenance to free up time for staff