EdTech @ ISB

Transforming Teaching & Learning

Author: Clint (page 2 of 4)

Brain Breaks for Online Learning

Image courtesy of Unsplash

During a normal school day, students use their devices on and off throughout the day. In the classroom, they are changing activities, working in small groups, focusing on the teacher at the front of the class, working on their own individual device, working offline, and getting up to go to recess or different classrooms. All of this leads to a variety of experiences throughout the day: online and offline; individual and group ; active and seated; independent and teacher-directed. The list can go on and on!

These breaks and changes of scenery give our students a chance to recharge, refocus and keep learning. As students and parents, how are you incorporating these mini-breaks into your daily routines?

One great option is taking a  brain break. A brain break is a short activity designed to get students up and out of their sets, to help the blood flow through their body, and to keep them from staying sedentary for too long. There are websites dedicated to listing out all manner of Brain Breaks for students, but many students already know some from their classroom teachers. One popular brain break is a quick Just Dance video that you can find on YouTube. Have a quick dance and some fun before starting your next task!

Another option is timing your snack and drink breaks to get you up and out of your chair. Take a few minutes to grab some fruit or another healthy snack,  or pour yourself a glass of water on a regular basis so that you keep your body fueled and moving!

Video Options for Online Learning

Video is an important element for continuing the learning through an online environment. At ISB there are several options available to teachers and students for uploading and sharing video content and responses. Unfortunately, there is no perfect option that will fit everybody’s needs, so it is important that you look at all the options available, weigh the pros and cons, and make the decision that is best for you. This flowchart can help you decide the best way to handle video content that you have created. Use the links at the bottom to learn how to do any of the options in the flowchart.

If you have any questions about what is best, contact EdTech or ICT and they can help you decide.

Uploading Videos to Dragons’ Tube

Dragons’ Tube (http://isbtube.isb.bj.edu.cn) is our self-hosted video server. The videos uploaded here are accessible to anyone in the world without VPN. ICT is working with our internet service providers in China to improve external access to Dragons’ Tube for uploading and viewing videos.

You can find a tutorial on how to upload to Dragons’ Tube here.

 

Uploading Videos to DX or Seesaw

In Middle and High School, you can upload a video directly to DX using the “File Upload” option. Technically, there is no file size limit but the smaller the video (compressed), the faster it will upload and the faster it will transcode for students to watch. If you’ve uploaded your video to Stream or Dragons’ Tube, you can also just paste the link to the video in the post.

 

In the Elementary School, you and your students can record a video directly into Seesaw, with a limit of 10 minutes recording time.

You can also upload a video that you have created and compressed to Seesaw using the “Upload” option. Or, if you have saved your video in OneDrive or ES 365 for others to use, you can paste the link into your message. If you use the “Insert Link” option, the link will work but it will create a preview image that is not very attractive!

Using the “Upload” option to a video saved on my computer

Using the “Link” option to a video shared on ES 365.

Pasting the shared link to a video on ES 365 into a note. If you want to make this a bit nicer, you could use a link shortener like tinyurl. Do not use bit.ly since it does not work without a VPN

 

Uploading Video to OneDrive

For ES and Parent videos, you can upload your compressed videos to OneDrive or ES 365 and can share them so that they are viewable by anybody with the link. You can then share this link in Seesaw or an email.

Upload the video to OneDrive by dragging it into the folder you want to store it in. Once it is there, you will need to create a sharing link for the video.

Once your video is uploaded to OneDrive or ES365, click the three dots and choose “Copy link”

Select “Anyone with link” and make sure “Allow editing” is NOT selected. Then apply the changes.

You need to copy the link that is created and share this with students and parents. You must always use this process to share a link. You cannot just send the URL of the video (unfortunately).

 

Uploading Videos to Microsoft Stream

Microsoft Stream (https://web.microsoftstream.com/) is a new feature of Office 365 that allows us to upload videos and share them with anybody in our organization. This means that in order to view a video shared on Stream, you must have an ISB email and password. This is not a suitable option for videos that are to be viewed by parents or by students in Grade 3 or below.

Some interesting features of Stream include automatic searchable transcript of the audio and the ability to link a form to the video for feedback and interactivity.

First, log in to Stream from any Office 365 tool (like Outlook Online, Word Online, etc.)

Upload your video under the “Create” menu. You can also create a Channel for your course (Grade 6 Humanities; Grade 10 Math; etc.) to group all the videos related to your course.

Once your video is uploaded, you can go to the viewing page. Grab the URL to share in a DX thought, or use the Share button to embed the video into your blog or into a DX Lesson.

Here’s an example of a video embedded from Stream. If you aren’t logged in to 365, it will not show properly. Click on the video and login to see it!

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/06ecc1ce-4e04-4994-a485-bf9d4370c023

 

 

Using Handbrake to Compress Video

To make working with video easier, it often helps to compress the final video before you try to upload it anywhere. This is especially important if your video is large and/or if you are working on a slower internet connection. All ISB computers came with Handbrake installed. It is designed specifically to compress video. If you don’t have it on your computer, you can download it at https://handbrake.fr/ 

Once you’ve checked that you have the newest version of Handbrake (version 1.3.1), select your video as the source file and choose preset VeryFast720p30. This will ensure a high quality output without taking too much timeI encoded a 5 minute video (700MB to start with) in about 2 minutes (26MB when it was done). 

Please note, if you are downloading a video from YouTube or another service, these videos are usually already optimized and will not always benefit from being run through Handbrake. 

 

Getting Started with Rescue Time

Image result for rescuetime logo

 

 

RescueTime is an app that can help users understand how they are using their time on their laptop. It can be used in a lot of different ways, but here at ISB we want to focus on empowering students and teachers to take control of their usage and to strive for intentional, balanced and productive use of technology.

Getting Started

To get started, you need to do three things:

  1. Download and install the app from Self Service (or from the RescueTime website).
  2. Create an account for the free/solo/lite. If you are a student, I suggest you use your school email address.
  3. Once you’ve installed the app, be sure to sign in from the menu bar at the top of your screen.

 

Now what?

Once RescueTime is installed and running, it will start collecting data on how you use your computer. This includes websites you visit, documents that you are working on,  and other programs that you use (like PowerPoint or Photoshop).

Setting Up Categories

Part of the way that RescueTime works is by categorizing the sites and apps that you use. It has some default categories (like Communication, Social Media, Design, Entertainment) and default values (from Very Productive to Very Distracting) built-in. RescueTime may not recognize some of the sites and platforms that we use at ISB and might consider them as “Uncategorized” and/or might consider them to be “Distracting”.  As a user, you can create and manage different categories as well as change its productivity value.

For example, I have created a sub-category in “Miscellaneous” for the different ISB Platforms like DX and OneDrive and have rated that time as “Very Productive”:

Once your categories are set up (and I would not recommend spending too much time doing this! You can always refine your categories as you go…), you are ready to take a look at some of your reports:

The Dashboard

The Dashboard is where you get started with RescueTime. This will give you a quick overview of your time for the day. You can also quickly jump to some activity reports for more details.

 

The Productivity Report

The Productivity Report shows your “pulse” based on the different values that have been assigned to different sites and apps:

You can click on each level to see how much time you spent on different sites and apps:

 

The Applications & Websites Report

You can also view your usage data sorted by app and site. Because we use the free version, there are some limitations to the amount of data that we have access to. A very interesting view in this report is the “All Activities by Hour” view. This helps you see when and how you were using your laptop throughout the day (and night!):

Troubleshooting

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when using RescueTime.

The first is that users can disable RescueTime tracking at any time! It can be turned off (quit) or paused; it can also be set to NOT start automatically. Because our focus is on awareness, understanding, and empowerment, it does you no good to turn it off! But, if your RescueTime reports aren’t showing as much data as you were expecting, check to make sure that it isn’t being turned off on accident (or on purpose!).

The second issue that you may find is that RescueTime is not collecting individual web page data. First, your Mac must be on Mojave in order to collect this information. All students should be running this OS; most teachers will be. Second, you need to make sure you grant access to allow RescueTime to collect this information. In order to do this, you can follow the instruction here.

Enabling Parent View of Assignment Feedback in DX

DX gives teachers lots of tools and features to help manage assignments: from calendar deadlines, to seeing who  has and hasn’t turned in the work on time (and sending messages to those who haven’t). There are also some great feedback tools that you can use with students: rubrics, annotations to submitted work, as well as written and audio comments.

You can now let parents see this feedback on an assignment by assignment basis!

On a specific assignment, a teacher can enable the ability for parents to see comments and scores, and even to view the submission itself. This can also be done retroactively.

A parent can then navigate to a particular course for their child and click “View Gradebook”:

 

If the teacher has allowed parents to only view score and comments, the parents will see the rubric and the general comments:

 

If the teacher has also allowed parents to view the submission, they can get even more information: Comments, annotations, self-assessment and teacher assessment:

There still isn’t a way for teachers to know if a parent has viewed the submission, so you may want to send them an email (easy to pull from PowerSchool) or ask parents to sign some sort of slip to acknowledge that they have seen the feedback.

MS and HS Report Card Grade Entry Options

Because there are some limitations to how PowerTeacher Pro (PTP) allows us to view our assessment data, we have worked to create some different workflows to help you enter levels of achievement for each reporting strand come report card time.

** All of the following is assuming that you have entered your assessment data in PowerTeacher Pro **

Just Use PowerTeacher Pro

If you plan on just using PTP, there are some helpful hints that might make it easier:

  • When looking at the “Standards Grade” view, what is displayed in each column depends on if you are in Middle School or High School In Middle School, the default is to not show anything and teachers can make a summary judgment of how each student has done at each standard. In High School, the default is to show the most recent level of achievement and this can be overridden by the teacher at any time.
  • You can use the Inspector to see what data contributes to each standard level of achievement if you think it should be overridden.
  • If you have levels of achievement for different standards, you can use the filter in order to see all of the standards make up a given strand so that you can make a strand determination for the report card.
  • You can also use the filters to show only the strands (or the SALs) so that you can see what is going on the report for each student.

SBGR Report Entry: Student – by – Student View

We have developed a new Student-by-Student view that pulls together all of the assessment by strand an orders it chronologically to help you determine what level of achievement should appear on the report. You can also write your comment for the student here as you look over all of the student assessment data. Some pointers for this view:

  • You can access this view by selecting it from menu on the left.
  • Assessments are ordered chronologically from left (oldest) to right (newest).
  • Formative assessments show as blue italics.
  • If you hover over the level of achievement, it will indicate which standard was assessed.
  • You can go student-by-student using the sideways arrows, or use the dropdown to choose a specific student.
  • You can use the tabs at the top to see what feedback was given to the student in previous reporting terms.
  • To return to your list of classes, select the view from the menu on the left again.

Class View – Standards Data Report

In order to see all of your class’ assessment data in one view, ordered chronologically and separated by strand, you can generate a static report that we refer to as the heatmap. You can then use this report to make determinations for each student and then go back to PTP or the student-by-student view to input the data and to write your comments. You can access the heatmap reports through the Apps tab in PTP:

Once you configure the report for downloading, you will see your class roster with the assessment data for each strand listed chronologically. You can use this view to help you make determinations for each strand and then use PowerTeacher Pro to enter the data for report cards.

What’s Best for You?

As mentioned previously, all of these tools rely on teachers collecting and recording assessment data in PTP. Unfortunately, none of these individual tools will be perfect for everybody on their own so you may come up with a way to combine the functionality of each one to suit your needs. For example:

  • Continue to use PowerTeacher Pro to enter your grades and comments. Nothing changes from how you’ve done things in the past.
  • Use the Standard Data Report to help you determine your Strand levels of achievement. Enter your grades and comments using PowerTeacher Pro.
  • Use the SBGR Report Entry tool to view your assessment data and enter your Strand levels of achievement and to write your comment.
  • Use the SBGR Report Entry tool to view your assessment data and enter your Strand levels of achievement. Return back to PowerTeacher Pro to write your comments (so you can use the comment bank).

 

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