In this Flipped Teacher Professional Learning video, I show you how to add columns in GSheets and then update your sum and average formulas.

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In this Flipped Teacher Professional Learning video I show you one way of setting up your Google Form to e-mail the responses to designated e-mail addresses.

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In this Flipped Teacher Professional Learning video I show you how to add various types of multimedia to your OneNote Notebook in Office365.

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In this Flipped Teacher Professional Learning video I show you how to add various types of multimedia to your OneNote Notebook in Office365.

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In this Flipped Teacher Professional Learning video, I explore what a ClassNote book looks like within Office365.

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One of the attractive components of the offer to work with ClickView was being able to facilitate professional learning in an area of pedagogical practice that I enjoy, am passionate about and that I think I am good at, using video content as an effective tool for learning. I have been involved thus far in two formal professional learning sessions and they have both been fantastic.

The first was an after school opt-in session, which meant that although there were only ten staff present, they were staff who wanted to engage with us and learn more. There were plenty of "ooooh, that is how you do that" moments, and the excitement in the air was palpable. That particular session was also a great session for me to view as it was facilitated by my direct manager who is proving to be a wealth of knowledge about the platform, processes and system underpinning ClickView, the clients, but also providing a steady influence in what has been a heady first week. His calm and deliberately paced way of speaking has proved to be a useful brake on my own first-week nerves and my desire to get on top of and understand everything yesterday.

It was also the first time that I had had the opportunity to see the teacher-side of ClickView which meant that for my own knowledge of the platform, it was an invaluable session. With my teacher hat on, I can definitely understand the attraction of the platform and why teachers want to use it.

The second session, which was today, was another opt-in session, but aimed at Primary Teachers. This session was organised and led by the Primary Team and was delivered in a rotating workshop format focusing on three areas: being able to search for and access content, being able to turn the content into interactive learning tools for students, and lastly, as an introduction to flipped learning. That was the aspect they asked me to come along and help out with, and it was a great learning curve. I really need to improve the succinctness and clarity of my this is what flipped learning is all about. Each of the three sessions heard a slightly different explanation and while none of them were wrong, I feel that I could have had a clearer delivery. This was somewhat frustrating for me as I have delivered the same presentation in seven minutes as part of a TeachMeet event.

That said, there were a total of, I think, twenty-three staff from the host school and a number of others in the area, all of whom engaged wholeheartedly with the sessions. Seeing the excitement in a student's eyes as they have a light bulb moment is still exciting, even if it is in a different context. Being able to help deliver professional learning to teachers who are engaged with and want to hear what you have to say is fantastic and exciting.

I fly out to Melbourne tomorrow to meet the Melbourne team and then for the remainder of the week, attend FutureSchools 2017, which I am excited for. I am hoping that Melbourne is a bit cooler and less humid as I am struggling with the oppressively humid conditions in Sydney at the moment.

I look forward to meeting up with some of my readers whilst in Melbourne, and if you are unable to attend, stay in touch using #FutureSchools on Twitter. If you have missed any articles in the FutureSchools series, you can find them here.

​In this Flipped Teacher Professional Learning video I show you how to set up a new Class Notebook using Office365.

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In this Flipped Teacher Professional Learning video I walk through the various features of OneNote for Office365.

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When has a lesson you've planned out not worked? Did you scrap it midway through or persevere? How did you move past that moment of failure in practice? What was your learning?

My regular readers would be aware that this year I am working in a team teaching context. Four weeks in and I have to say that it is working out fantastically well. On a daily basis I am learning new strategies for different needs; negotiating with challenging students, getting alongside students with low self-efficacy to build them to undertake the learning task without doing the task for them, different strategies for whole-class reading, strategies for managing assessment of learning  and using it as data for the next phase of learning and am very slowly building my own self-efficacy as a Stage One teacher.

It is a completely different world to Stage Three. The strategies are different, the questions you ask and the questions you answer are different. The learning tasks are different.

Yesterday I was leading a whole class maths lesson focusing on place value. It seemed to go well to start with, but when we got to the guided learning part, it fell apart a little. I think where I went wrong was that I brought in the the number zero and started including that in our discussion (it had been our focus in the previous) and I think that it confused students as from their perspective it seemed like I had changed topic. I had been asking questions such as if i have 421 sheep, how do I write that number? We were talking about the need to write 421 rather than 400201 or 40021 etc. When I brought in zero it was on the back of if I have 100 sheep why do I write 100 and not just 1? which generated some very productive discussion about why zero is important as a digit.

The next task was where I got things wrong. I split the class into three groups and asked them to use their bodies to represent the three place values we were working with for various numbers (hundreds, tens, unit). I.e. I gave them 342 as a starting number, modelling this with one group, and asked for three people to stand together to represent the hundreds, four to represent the tens and two to represent the units. They struggled to get past the hundreds as they each wanted to form that group, then they each wanted to form the tens group. We got through one number successfully, eventually, and then tried it as a class. It did not work. I pulled them all back in as a single group and we moved on to a different activity.

I asked my colleague afterwards if it made sense what I was trying to achieve, and he said he could see exactly what I was trying to do but that it was perhaps a little too abstract for this particular age group. It may have worked with Stage Two students, or if it was just a group of Year Two students, but not with this particular cohort.

It was a valuable lesson in reminding me that I need to spend more time thinking activities all the way from through from start to finish and consider ways to bring it back to the focus if things start to go off the rails to ensure that the students are achieving the lesson focus. It was also a reminder of how valuable having a colleague in the room can be to not only remind you that are a capable teacher after failed lessons, but to pick up on questions or ideas that you have missed or forgotten or to help manage a small group of students who need additional support.

FutureSchools is shifting to a new home for the 2017 iteration. The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) will be hosting educators from across Australia in a setting vastly different to that of Australian Technology Park where previous FutureSchools events have been held. I am looking forward to attending, not least because I genuinely enjoy being in Melbourne, but it will be a chance to see FutureSchools from another perspective.

Time is running out to register your place in one of the six masterclasses or the five conference streams. If you are not sure which conference stream is right for you, then keep reading. if you have not yet booked your place, include a Gala Dinner ticket in your registration and use code BTS150 by 11:59pm on Friday 10th February to receive $150 off which effectively makes the Gala Dinner ticket is free.

The Future Leaders conference is focused on looking at the future of teaching and learning through examination of current global trends and developments in school education, including changes to the: schooling system; society; behaviour; pedagogy; curriculum; technology; professional learning; and learning spaces. This conference will include the plenary keynotes from Dr. Milton Chen, Jan Owen AM and Prakash Nair as well as case-studies and presentations from current education leaders and teachers. To read more about the Future Leaders conference, click here. I am hoping to hear Michael Ha's session which will focus on taking the professional and student learning opportunities that arise from technology.

The Teaching Kids to Code conference is focused on teaching students to code through professional development for teachers around the Australian Digital Technologies curriculum. This conference stream will explore the challenges of teaching students to code and why we should be teaching students to code as well as provide a forum for collaboration  in driving STEM, computational thinking and coding beyond the classroom. This conference will include the plenary keynotes from Dr. Milton Chen, Jan Owen AM and Prakash Nair as well as case-studies and presentations from educators currently utilising coding as part of their pedagogical practice. To read more about the Teaching Kids to Code stream, please click here. I would particularly like to hear the panel session focusing on the national digital technologies rollout and the opportunities and trouble areas that have arisen thus far for integrating the curriculum.

​My usual FutureSchools home, the ClassTech conference  has a broad agenda which focuses on how to use various technologies and technology-based pedagogical practices in the classroom. I've written extensively over the last two years from the ClassTech conference stream and this year looks to be as good as ever. This conference will include the plenary keynotes from Dr. Milton Chen, Jan Owen AM and Prakash Nair as well as case-studies and presentations from educators currently utilising coding as part of their pedagogical practice. As I am currently working in a team-teaching context, I a particularly looking forward to hearing Sally Wood and Simone Segat speak about how team teaching can enhance digital technology learning. I have heard Joel Speranza speak about using videographic feedback previously and can also recommend his session with cnofidence. To read more about the ClassTech conference, please click here.

The Special Needs and Inclusion Conference (SNIC) is aimed at presenting practices that are working for educators around the country when it comes to integrating and support students with difficult backgrounds or who have learning disorders and disabilities such as auditory processing, Autism Spectrum Disorders, behavioural issues, dyslexia, as well as those students whom are identified as being gifted or talented. The focus is to provide innovative, proven and practical ideas that can be implemented in your classroom within existing frameworks and taking advantage of special needs technologies. Delegates will also hear the plenary keynotes from Dr. Milton Chen, Jan Owen AM and Prakash Nair. I am particularly looking forward to hearing Karina Barley speak about creating a space in which an autistic student can feel secure and engage with their learning.

I am actually looking forward to a number of the sessions on the Young Learners agenda this year. I have to admit that in previous years I have not looked at the agenda as I have been teaching upper primary, however, this year I have shifted to Stage One and so it has become rather relevant. This conference stream is focused on examining how Early Years through to Stage One teachers can tap into digital technologies to provide new and enhanced learning opportunities, with practical sessions allowing delegates to get hands on and confident with various tools. This session does include the plenary keynotes from Dr. Milton Chen, Jan Owen AM and Prakash Nair. As a new parent, I am particularly interested in hearing from Dr Kristy Goodwin who will be addressing the impact of digital immersion on a child's physical development, health and well-being, and learning and how this can redefine not just the role of educators, but the approach.

There are also six Masterclasses to choose form, however, I will publish a separate overview of those early next week. I look forward to meeting some of my readers at FutureSchools 2017 and remember to register before 11:59pm Friday 9 February to take advantage of the BTS150 giving $150 off the registration price when a Gala Dinner ticket is included.

In this Flipped Teacher Professional Learning video, I show you how you can use Google Forms as a platform to allow parents to book in for Parent/Teacher Interviews, or for staff booking of breakout sessions during Professional Development sessions etc. There are of course many other uses, however, such as the booking of resources (school hall, playground space before or after school for sport team training for example), so this is not a definitive list.

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In this episode of Flipped Teacher Professional Learning I show you how to set up a basic MS Form  and how to access the results of responses through Office365.

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In this episode of Flipped Teacher Professional Learning, I walk through the layout of Word Online and give you two examples of how it can be used as a collaboration tool in your classroom.
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Day one of FlipCon Adelaide was fantastic and you can find the articles for day one by clicking here. You can also find the Storify of the tweets from day one here. Additionally, Peter Whiting (@Mr_van_w) and his colleague Bill Tink (@BillTink) recorded their own reflections as a podcast which is available here and is a great reflection on the day overall from some different perspectives.

Day two promised to be a great day. Part of FlipCon Adelaide was a school tour. Delegates were offered a choice, a few weeks out, of touring the host school, Brighton Secondary School (BSS) or of touring Glenunga International High School (GIHS). Having heard Jeremy LeCornu (@MrLeCornu) speak on multiple occasions (for example, here and here) as well as Olivia O’Neill speak (here) I felt that I would be better served by and would learn more from touring a school of which I knew nothing and therefore had no preconceptions about what I would see or hear.

The initial statistics we were provided were impressive in my mind. Years Eight to Twelve and just fewer than two thousand students representing seventy-four nationalities on the one campus blew my mind, in addition to running the International Baccalaureate Diploma program as well as the South Australian Certificate of Education as parallel courses. Upon arrival at GIHS, we were greeted by the incoming Prefects as well as some of the school Executive staff. In their Performing Arts Centre, we heard a welcome address from Harry Postema, who also introduced the other speakers who would be following him, including Principal Wendy Johnson, Deputy Principal Jeremy Cogan, Innovative Pedagogies Leader Cindy Bunder and incoming Prefects Indigo and Layla.
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Part of the tour would be about viewing flipped classes in action, both a technical or academic class, and a hands-on or practical class. We were advised that delegates were arbitrarily divided up into the four groups for the school tours, with each group viewing different classes. There was no consideration of our own teaching contexts or faculty background as it was about seeing the flipped pedagogy in action rather than the content.

Wendy Johnson, GIHS Principal and Flipped Learning International Ambassador, was introduced next, and she spoke about the importance of pedagogy for flipped learning. The role of Innovative Pedagogies Leader at GIHS was focused on helping teachers change their pedagogy to make the best use of the reclaimed class time as a result of flipping their classes. This was facilitated by making a decision to start classes later on Wednesday mornings and make the morning a time for staff professional development and collaboration on developing pedagogies that would assist in taking the school from good to great.

As a primary teacher, we are continually reminded that the first two hours of our school day are the critical learning times when students are at their freshest cognitively and therefore this is where literacy and numeracy teaching is to take place (which makes me question the value assigned to the other key learning areas by policy makers). It is for this same reason that the decision was made to move staff professional development to the morning. Teachers typically feel the same as students in the afternoon; tired and worn out and so the retention of learning and the cognitive engagement is lowered and therefore the value of that time is reduced.

I was curious about the late start and what impact it had on the students and the opportunity to ask came during the morning tea break. The Prefects remained with us and quite confidently and willingly engaged the delegates in conversation and so I asked them about what they used that time for and whether those two hours were added back into the timetable somewhere else with late classes. We were told that they were not added back in and that what they were used for varied, as would be expected student to student. The two Prefects we were speaking with said that typically they would use it to either catch up on sleep or would get up at their normal time and use it to complete individual space tasks or study for exams.

​Returning to Wendy’s address, she advised that they made a conscious decision to invest time and money in professional development on technology use and on pedagogical practice. The then-current model of professional development and learning was not working as teachers would draw on their own experience to form their pedagogical framework or paradigm and then listen to what was being said and take they already know or what they wanted to know. Changing that mentality was a significant challenge.

As you would perhaps expect there was some strong resistance to this change in focus on professional development but that traction won over the period of a few years and that they now have a pedagogical framework that all staff members are committed to. They utilised the mandated Teaching for Effective Learning framework as a starting point and the final GIHS Pedagogical Framework evolved from there. The clear focus from each speaker was on pedagogical improvement for students’ benefit and it was coming through not just in the words that were being said, but in how they were being said and the way that the Prefects held themselves and spoke.
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We were told that the capture of learning cycle documentation (lesson plans, programs, assessment schedules etc.) was revamped to make it more a more valuable process rather than merely the satisfying of policy. I do not have notes on what that revamp looked like which leads me to believe we were not told the specifics of that. Given my current career status as an early career teacher, any guidance on making the development of learning cycle documentation more beneficial and useful is welcome.

​The above statement is an interesting one and requires some unpacking. The first inference is that if you only have pockets of excellence than by deductive reasoning you must have large amounts of stagnant and / or stale teachers and pedagogies; a sad indictment on a beleaguered teaching profession. It would seem intuitive that teaching, as with any other profession or sector contains a continuum of practitioners of varying qualities and abilities. I do not know if I agree with the surface implications of the statement, however, I can understand the position that the statement is made from.

​We also heard about how it was critical for the success of the change in focus that parents understood the goals and to that end, the school hosted an information night showing a unit taught using traditional pedagogies and then using contemporary pedagogies, including flipped learning. They were expecting around fifty parents, however, ended up with two hundred and fifty. Part of the education process for the parents and the students alike was that the change to flipped learning, improved pedagogies, and improved learning outcomes would not be instantaneous.

​For a change of pace, we heard from two of the incoming school Prefects, Indigo and Layla. One of the key messages that came through in their address was that the change to contemporary pedagogies was not about teachers providing all of the answers to students, but that it was about the teachers guiding students to understand what questions to ask.

The message in here is one of trust and strong relationships. Students are used to playing the game of school and of being given the answers when they are unable to work it out themselves. This focus on relationships between teachers and peers is also building trust that the teachers want to work with the students for the students’ benefit.

​The vision for the pedagogical framework moving forward into 2017 is that any teacher can walk into any lesson and see the required characteristics and that if that is not the case, then a conversation about why not needs to occur. It is a tough stance; however, given the process that the school has gone through to reach this point, it seems fair. The impact of this framework is especially critical given that teachers need to plan for effective use of the group space with flipped learning to ensure that students are engaging more deeply and using higher level cognitive skills and processes than in traditional classrooms.

​We next heard about the flipped content or learning objects (LOs) and the delegates heard, once again, that getting hung up on the quality of the LO is not useful. The LO prepared by the students’ own teacher is the best option, and having high-level production values does not make or break the quality of the instruction imparted in the video. This assertion, which I have heard from numerous flipped educators as do you want it perfect or on Tuesday? is supported by research, such as that conducted by Peter Whiting which I wrote about here.

​A key factor in this is knowing the content and the learning goal for the LO that is being developed to enable it to be created quickly, with minimum fuss and with no post-production, a practice that Joel Speranza (@JoelBSperanza) promotes and which can be seen in the below video.

​Flipping does not happen every lesson, however, deep thinking and deep learning can [happen every lesson] was the message we heard next, as Cindy Bunder took the podium. Flipped classes should be more active, both mentally and physically with a focus on the Four Cs. She posited that the individual learning space should take no longer than ten minutes maximum, and should not be meaningless homework.
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I asked two prefects during the morning tea break about this and was told that on average they were both completing roughly three hours of homework most nights. This was across all of their courses and they included their general revision and studying load in this time. On further probing, they both indicated that they felt that the actual homework component of their nightly workload was less than prior to flipped learning, however, that the time spent on a specific course varied depending on the context of what was being covered and how much time was spent engaging by pausing, re-watching, and taking notes from the LO.

​It was interesting to hear that with flipped learning in place teachers now feel that they have time to teach key skills that are not part of the explicit curriculum such as note taking, time management, critical thinking and how to use individual time and group time to gain the maximum benefit for their learning. Direct instruction is still important within flipped learning; however, it needs to be appropriate and minimal.

​At that, the opening addresses concluded and it was time for morning tea, pockets of delegates peppering GIHS Prefects with questions formed. I will leave off here and discuss the conversations I had with the Prefects and some other students as we completed the tour and our lesson observations. Thank you for reading, as always, and I would appreciate any feedback on this article. The clear message that came through from all of the speakers was that flipped learning is about and has resulted in improved pedagogies and relationships.

In this episode of Flipped Teacher Professional Learning, I show you how to create a Kahoot using the new Kahoot Creator.
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