EdTech @ ISB

Transforming Teaching & Learning

Author: Clint (page 4 of 4)

Upcoming Ed Tech PD

October 14, 2016 / / 0 Comments
flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons ( CC0 ) license

flickr photo shared by cogdogblog under a Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons ( CC0 ) license

As teachers in China, we’re lucky to be working in a region with amazing professional development opportunities, particularly related to educational technology. Here is a (probably incomplete) list of ed tech-related PD opportunities for the rest of the school year:

Office 365 Summit | January 14 – 15 | Guangzhou

This is the first ever Office 365 Summit and is a direct response to the needs of international schools in China. It’s also a chance for you to present some of the awesome things that you are doing with Office 365 in your classrooms. It would be great to have a strong ISB presence at this conference and there may be opportunities to support teachers who are interested in presenting or attending!

EARCOS Teachers Conference | March 30 – April 1 | Kota Kinabalu

This year’s ETC features an educational technology strand with special presentations and preconference offerings focused on transforming your classroom through educational technology.

EARCOS Weekend Workshops | Ongoing | Various

In addition to the Teachers Conference, EARCOS supports a number of smaller weekend workshops around the region and some of them have a specific ed tech focus. For example, Go Deeper with Social Media in Teaching and Learning with Dr Alec Couros in November, or Integrating Media and Technology in the Chinese Classroom in February.

21C Learning Hong Kong | March 10 – 11 | Hong Kong

The 9th iteration of the popular Hong Kong based conference. Lots of interesting workshops on offer, and another great chance to hone your presenting skills!

The Level 5 | throughout the year | Shekou International School

Some great offerings, from Arduino robots to Graffiti Art, by teachers throughout the Asia region. It’s close by at SIS so you can get a great professional learning experience with no time out of the classroom!

If you’d like to chat about any of these, stop on by the Ed Tech Office!

 

 

In-School Professional Learning

September 13, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Earlier this year, the Ed Tech Office sent out a brief survey to get the opinions of teachers across the school regarding what and when they wanted to learn about leveraging educational technology with students and with their colleagues. With 73 responses across the school, here’s a quick summary of the results:

Timing

Not surprisingly, considering how active teachers are in supporting students, planning classes and running activities, the best time for in-school learning opportunities is during our existing Wednesday meeting time.

MSForms Best Time

However, when looking at what other times could work, prep periods during the day and time after school seems to be popular choices.

MSForms Possible Times

Topics of Interest

It is not surprising that working with Office 365, particularly with students, and using iPads in the classroom are high on the priority list. I suspect, though I haven’t broken apart the data too much, that there is a divide between ES teachers (iPads) and MS/HS teachers (Office 365) based on what is age-appropriate for their students.

MSForms Immediate Topics

It’s great to see the wide variety of interests that our students have when it comes to supporting them in teaching and learning in the classroom. Again, Office 365 and iPads dominate the responses, but it is clear that we are thinking way beyond the tools themselves and more on the possibilities that these tools (and the associated skills and mindset) afford.

MSForms Interested Topics

What Next?

Based on the results of this survey, it is clear that we will need to revamp our in-school learning system, Small Bytes. Starting soon, instead of only happening throughout the day, the Ed Tech Facilitators will offer sessions after school so that teachers who are available and who have expressed this preference can have their needs met. There is also upcoming Professional Development days (TTT) in November where we can learn from and with one another.

Keep your eyes and ears open for the revamp of Small Bytes!

 

Subscribe, Unsubscribe and Broadcast in O365 Groups

September 1, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Have you found yourself missing out on important messages? Has somebody said that they sent a message to the Group, but you can’t seem to find it? Alternatively, do you find that you are getting WAY TOO MANY messages from your group and want to find a way to control them effectively?

Every member of the group has an ability to subscribe to group messages. By doing so, you ensure that each message in the Group Conversation is sent directly to your inbox. This is great when you want to make sure you don’t miss a thing.

O365 Groups Subscribe

By unsubscribing, you will no longer receive these Group Conversation messages in your inbox. Instead you will be notified by a message counter in the Groups area of Outlook.O365 Conversation

If you want to send a message to your Group and want to FORCE it to show up in the inbox of all members – even those who have unsubscribed – you can use the Broadcast feature in Conversations. (Pro Tip: You can also write @all in the body of the email being sent to the Group mailing list.)
O365 Broadcast

Now you can help control the amount of email that ends up  in your inbox and also ensure that important messages reach those who need to read them!

Small Bytes – Working with Groups in Office 365

September 1, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Thanks to all the teachers who came out for our first round of Small Bytes. We had a healthy turnout as we discussed Working with Groups in Office 365. It’s always interesting to get a group of teachers together to discuss these tools and platforms because it always helps us understand all of the different ways that teachers are using them in their classrooms!

We mainly had a chance to play around in a Sandbox Group, free from the fear of messing up *something important*. We also talked a bit about how to subscribe/unsubscribe from notifications and how to use conversations. Finally we spent some time discussing how the shared files work and how to share files between Groups using links rather than making a copy of the document.

I’ve embedded the simple slideshow that we used to help guide our discussion. If you have any questions about any of it, or about anything else related to Groups, leave a comment or swing by the Ed Tech Office!

https://isbdragons-my.sharepoint.com/personal/chamada_isb_bj_edu_cn/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?guestaccesstoken=Cqkf8U7KlZJdGd4dgXggkv6Ha2PMldYyoWQwnHraPhQ%3d&docid=061ddd6b14c474a02a02696730c088dcb&rev=1

Adding the Day Rotation to Your Calendar

August 19, 2016 / / 1 Comment

The rotating block schedule is great for student learning, but as a teacher it can be to keep track of what day in the cycle it is. Fortunately, you can add the rotation schedule to your Outlook calendar so you can easily see what day it is! Here’s how:

First, open the calendar page from Dragon’s Gate and select the iCal feed from the right sidebar.

In the window that pops up, choose the iCal feed of the calendar you wish to sync. Click the “Get Standard iCal URL” option.

In the window that pops up, copy the URL to the calendar feed:

Switch over to your Outlook Online Calendar and select “Add calendar”:

Paste the URL into the correct box and give the calendar a name. You can even change the color and/or select an icon that will appear before all events:

 

Your new calendar should now appear both in the Online calendar and in the Desktop App calendar; and you’ll never lose track of the days again!

 

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