Welcome to the latest UTB newsletter!
Welcome to this fortnight's newsletter. Last week we welcomed Adam Miller into the UTB family as our general manager. Adam has had a wealth of experience from leading the team at Noel Leeming in New Zealand. In addition to that, Julia is now back from maternity leave and back full time in the marketing managers chair. Both Adam and Julia have some great opportunities in the pipeline for you to learn from our amazing team of trainers. Speaking of which, we are always looking out for more trainers to work casually/part time with us. If you are keen to be added to our list of potential trainers, please fill out the form in the newsletter.
Tomorrow I am facilitating a session for HP on how to do more with less. Most teachers love to collect things...teaching resources, worksheets, apps and programs...but more isn't necessarily better! Maybe between now and Christmas (there is less than 60 sleeps to go) you could make it a focus to take one app or platform and discover one new cool use/feature.
Want to get a jump start? Check out our next free live training on the 10 Google tips that always get a 'wow' response when we show them to you! Click here to find out more!
- Mike Reading
In this issue...
- YouTube Rabbit Holes
- Something we think you'll like - piZap
- Lesson idea for computational thinking and creativity
- Blog posts you may have missed
- Something else we think you'll like - storytelling and coding
- An exciting update in Google Sheets
- Tips and tricks
- Looking ahead to 2020
- Deep Fakes - What's real?
- Want to join the UTB team? Now's the time!
- Find out how you can win a FREE ONLINE course with UTB
YouTube Rabbit Holes
WHY YOUR STUDENTS NEED YOUR SUPPORT NOW MORE THAN EVER!
Do your students use YouTube?
Do you scaffold how they do this?
Do you know that YouTube pay very smart people very large amounts of money to write algorithms that keep you clicking and watching more videos?
This article gives several examples of just how YouTube leads viewers to videos that are completely out of context from what they initially started looking for.
"Mozilla published 28 stories to pressure YouTube into allowing outside experts to help fix a recommendation engine that sometimes leads people toward disturbing videos."
Obviously YouTube is a brilliant source of information for our students but it is VITAL that teachers scaffold how students use this so that students understand how to find and evaluate content. Just as we taught how to use a library, we need to teach how to search effectively online.
Some ways to support students could be:
- Create playlists for your students to view and show them how to create their own
- Embed selected videos into Sites or Slides
- Share links to relevant videos through Google Classroom or OneNote
- Set activities for students to use filters to find relevant videos
- Use tools like EdPuzzle to ensure students are interacting with videos, not just viewing them passively
We're working on a blog post with more ideas and resources to help you and your students use YouTube better - download our app to get notified when we release new blogs and stay up to date! Links to the UTB app are at the bottom of this newsletter.
something we think you'll like...
Up your image game!
We've been doing alot of work in schools recently with Book Creator. Teachers and students alike love it - but one question we get asked often is...
How can I edit photos within Book Creator?
The short answer is you can't.
But you can edit your images first - then add them to your book.
A site I often recommend is piZap - mostly because it works on whatever device you may be using - Chromebooks, iPads or laptops.
You can cut images out, add backgrounds, borders and stickers. There are awesome filters and text options also.
When you've finished making your images look super awesome guess what - on the iPad you can send them straight to Book Creator and on the web you can save them directly to your Google Drive.
If you're looking to up your image game - check out piZap here.
Lesson idea... computational thinking
Last week I had the pleasure of spending the week in Taupo, teaching primary school students how to use Scratch (and learning a lot myself).
Google's CS First website has lots of great Scratch projects for students of all levels. One that was very popular was the 'Create your own Google Logo' project.
We began the lesson by chatting about how the Google logo becomes a 'Google Doodle' for special occasions or events and the kids all thought of an occassion or event (some real, some not!) that they wanted to celebrate.
I reccomend watching the first video together as a class, then getting the kids to open the project and work through the other videos on their own (or in groups) to learn about adding extra effects to their logo.
Happy Google Doodling in Scratch!
By Samantha
blog posts you may have missed
Check out the practical, helpful tips in our blogs below.
Something you want us to blog about? Make a request here or check out our website to see all our posts.
Technology, sustainability and saying goodbye to some old friends - If you were to create a pile of all the LPs, cassettes and CDs you ever owned how big would it be? Where are they all now? Did you throw them out? Recycle them? Technology has both positive and negative consequences - the impact of some technological change on the environment has been massive. Exploring technology, sustainability and the environment should be part of all curriculums. - By Lara Kirk
How to get started with unplugged activities in your classroom - If you were asked, “If a visitor to your school was to walk into a typical room, what might they see students doing with technology?” what might your answer be? Using unplugged activities can help develop computational thinking in your students, allowing that use of technology to maybe look a little different. This blog will give some ideas of ways to integrate these activities into your classroom. - By Donna Golightly
Workbench and Google Sheets Part 1 - As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to integrate digital tools, especially in the STEAM space, so that meaningful learning experiences can take place. Ultimately, I want to be able to combine a variety of applications and devices together and develop some coding to gather data and control external devices. Workbench provides the backbone to be able to do that. - By Adrian Francis
Something we think you'll like...
Digital Storytelilng meets coding
Digital storytelling is a great way to engage students in the process of organising their thoughts and ideas while developing those all important computational thinking skills.
This website is a real gem when it comes to developing both of these.
Students write their stories, or they can create them as they go, and then they code the interactive elements including characters, sounds and animations. To get your students started you can also open an existing project and remix it.
Like most websites today there is a free and paid version - the paid version offers a wider selection of elements to choose from. With the free version you are able to create one class with 30 students, so as the teacher, you can see all your students work in one place.
And yes, it works on iPads too!
If you are wanting to integrate coding into your literacy program we highly recommend you check this one out.
Google Sheets Update -Directly edit charts
We're super excited to see that we will now be able to edit charts directly in Google Sheets. This feature is being rolled out from now and should be available for everybody soon. Check out all the details here.
TIPS AND tricks
Adjust your text size easily - iPad or iPhone
If you're an iPad or iPhone user have you added text size to your countrol center?
It's a quick way to be able to make text larger or smaller as needed. In your settings scroll down to Control Centre, then tap on Customise Controls.
Find Text Size and tap the green + next to it - now it's in your control centre.
When you want to change the size of the text, open your control center (by swiping down from the top right corner of your device) and adjust the bars as required. The more bars that are coloured the larger the text will be.
And if you go to Acessibility > Display & Text Size > Larger Text and toggle that on you will get even more bars to choose from.
Super handy!
Easy, accesible sound recorder
Often we just need a simple online voice recorder for our students to be able to quickly explain their thinking, or maybe record themselves reading a story.
This one is very easy to use.
They click on the record button, pause if they need to, preview their recording and rerecord if needed before downloading it as an mp3 file.
It also has a timer button so they can see how long they are recording for.
Bookmark it for easy access when needed.
looking ahead to 2020
The UTB team are planning out their calendars for next year. We are aiming to make sure we are giving you what you need, where you need it!
This would be a great time for you to let us know what sort of training and workshops you'd like to see us offer near you. Our plan is to get dates and locations locked in now so you can talk to whoever is in charge of the PLD purse strings at your school and get booked in early.
If you've never been to any of our training you can check out some of our feedback here -we're pretty proud of our 4.84 out of 5 rating from over 1700 workshop trainees!
So fill in this form and let us know what you're after! We'll let you know our plans soon!
Join the UTB Team as a trainer!
We have a few training opportunities to join the UTB training team in Australia and New Zealand.
We're keen to hear from people who may be interested in full time, part time or casual work with us.
If you are a passionate educator, digitally savvy and keen to explore training options fill in this form to express your interest. We'll get back to you with more details!
WIN A FREE UTB COURSE!
SHARING IS CARING!
We love getting your feedback about ideas you've used from this newsletter or from one of our training sessions!
In fact, we get such a kick out of it that every fortnight we want to give someone who shares the love a free online course of your choice - valued at up to $300!
All you need to do is a share a photo or video of an activity that was inspired by something we shared with you (could be from face to face, online training or the newsletter), with a quick caption telling us what's happening in it!
Here are a couple of ways you can share...
- Share it on Twitter or Instagram and tag us in with @Usingtechbetter, #utbSHARE and #utbPD
- Not on Twitter or Insta? No worries - email it to us at support@usingtechnologybetter.com and we'll share it out on our social media
SHARE TO BE IN TO WIN NEXT FORTNIGHT!!!
Credits:
Created with images by Caleb Woods - "untitled image" • bharath g s - "untitled image" • John Barkiple - "A stem demonstrator at Craft Lake City presented his electrical contraptions."