This is the presentation I did at the EdTech Team New Zealand North Island GAFE Summit:
I am a primary qualified teacher in New Zealand. I was teaching up until Term 1 last year with the intention of going to teach in Victoria in Australia. Instead I ended up working with the RTLBs for a year implementing GAFE for them. This is based on my year journey with them, introducing GAFE to their staff, that's 36 RTLBs based in a cluster in Auckland and the things I did with them.
I'm a beginner blogger and a tiny tweeter. I'm trying to get more into the education based social media as opposed to my personal social media. My goal over the last year has been to get more involved with that kind of thing. Because of the work I have been doing with the RTLBs I decided to do my Google Educator Certificate. I found all the reading and things that you have to do, not even the exams at the end, especially if you are active in your Drive and Apps, are really valuable. Especially if you are helping your staff, I learned so much from the readings, which are free, you don't even have to sit the exams. In my private time I'm an avid reader and I'm a gamer. My roles in the cluster have been constantly changing and one of the things I have been is walking IT support.
I'm going to talk about how we got started with Google Apps for Education accounts, some challenges that we had along the way and where we are a year on from that.
The very first thing I did (when I presented to the whole cluster group on 'what is Google Apps for Education?'), was a survey. The reason I did this is because I wanted to know where people were at. As a collective its also good for them to see where everyone is at. A lot of people think they are bad at something or that they lack the confidence to see what they are capable of and they don't actually realise they are in the same boat as most people. Seeing where everyone is at offers relief that they aren't the only ones in that boat. Try to make it a quick survey that takes about one minute so that they can just go tick, tick, tick and then you can move on. Then I shared the results with them. Because I used Google Forms you get a summary of responses and a spreadsheet which you can share at the time so they can see right away where everyone is. You can see what types of Google Apps people are using and how confident they are with them. Instant information which is up to date is what you want to deal with. You can also address questions at the end that you don't cover in the session.
We made the mistake of starting off with private Gmail's, that created a lot of problems for us. My advice would be to start off with GAFE right away rather than trailing in private Gmail's to practice. The first thing you need to set up is your passwords. I attended a session, I think it might have been with Allanah King, where someone asked 'How safe is Google Drive?'. She replied with 'Your drive is as secure as your password'. That was pivotal for me, it is true, your Drive is only as safe as your password. People are worried about their information and people hacking into their Drives. If your password is cat then it obviously isn't very secure and people are going to get in to easier than if it was cat2950FelixRocks29#!. So one of the first things I did was talk to them about passwords and how to create secure passwords. All the resources I used I have put into the folder so don't worry about scrambling to get information down. I set this up for them, I didn't push it, just shared it and let them go back to it later before they created their passwords. It just meant they had ideas on how to make secure passwords and points of reference to go back to.
I presented to them based on the fact they had no knowledge of GAFE. What you do will depend on where all your staff are at. I had a few staff in personal Drive accounts but the majority weren't. So I just said 'look I'm sorry if this isn't at your level, I'm pitching low so that everyone understands where we are headed and what I'm talking about. They were understanding, there isn't much you can do, if people don't know what GAFE is you can't pitch high because peoples thoughts and thinking just aren't there. I started really basic, like what's the difference between Drive/Docs/Apps, because even now people are still getting those confused. Even just getting peoples heads around Google Apps for Education and how it is different from the free version or Business version. Sonya Van Schijik explained it to me best when she described it as being like a bubble or umbrella. GAFE is just like your private account except that its in a bubble so its got all those education protectors on it. That's why you pay for Google Apps for Education accounts. It's important for your staff to know those differences so they understand why their GAFE account is more secure. Also cover and explain why you are moving to GAFE. Selling it to your staff is key. Once I explained the basics of what Drive is and why we were wanting to use it I wanted to do a sampler to see if they could do a few things. On reflection that was a lot for one session. so I'd possibly split it into two sessions. So don't forget that if you have people that you are pitching to at that lower level, like students, they probably won't get it after only one session because the majority of them probably won't go home and have a practice after the first session. Their accounts/logins/passwords had already been created. Before they left I wanted to make sure they could log into their Drive, access a common file (set up before to the meeting), how to use the search, add a star and make a copy of a document. Aim to keep it basic. Walk through each one but keep it simple.
One of the challenges was what is intuitive to various levels of people, everyone processes things differently. How often you use computers will impact how you are able to access any tool online. If you leave your computer at school and don't use one at home then you aren't going to be as competent on a computer as someone who perhaps takes theirs home and uses it to access different things. One of the big challenges they had was finding the documents. I found people didn't know where things were stored and that some people just could not process how to search in their drive. One of the things I did was set up a site. I think of the Drive being the insides and the Site being the window dressing on the outside. For some people a site is the better way of finding things. I much prefer 'Search Drive' because I can find a document in seconds but for some people the site worked much better because the format was different and it worked better for their processing or the way they remembered things. Setting up the site really helped for people who found the Drive clunky and hard to navigate. You can have public and private sites so you can set up one for your staff and a separate one for parents that can link out to external sites or blogs etc. Another hicup we had was offline drive. Google Drive is live, so you need the internet to use it. If you don't have internet you don't have Drive. You can however download an offline drive that works much the way dropbox etc. do. So it syncs your documents when it comes back online. If you plan on using offline Drive there are two parts. You have to download the offline Drive and you also have to go into the settings in your online Drive settings and enable it. Not having access to internet in all schools also proved valuable learning around how to set up hotspots so RTLB's could tether their laptops to their phones.
There are many things out there to support staff who are struggling with Apps etc. One person/site I would recommend is Allanah King. I meet Allanah King when I did some iPad PD she was running at Newmarket Primary School several years ago. As well as being in a class and working for Core Education, Allanah is an Apple Educator and Google Certified Teacher. If you're lucky, she can be booked (if she has the space in her busy schedule - tweet her @allanahk) to come into your school and do a PD session. She has an amazing site called 'Getting Good with Google' which I couldn't recommend high enough. I always recommend it to anyone who is struggling how to use Google Apps etc. She has all kinds of links and videos, and it's completely public. There is everything from docs to slides to chrome apps and extensions. I set up some help videos, which you are more than welcome to use as well, just bear in mind they were relevant in May 2014, Google is ever changing/updating so some things will have changed - tables is a good example. These don't work for everyone but some people prefer to watch a video instead of read text on how to do something. Other people like to have the video on in the back ground while they do it themselves in another tab. The aim is that you cover all your bases so that all your staff feel supported. I set up a help folder and just continue to add to it. I find that usually if one person has a problem then five more will have the same problem. If you create a document around that then you can refer other people back to it too. Google also have help documents already made up which are amazing and I highly recommend checking those out too.
After the initial introduction I went out and had one on one sessions that really helped. This isn't possible in a school but you could do it in a full staff meeting or syndicates or groups, The beauty of groups is that they can help each other problem solve. I created a list of specific things that I wanted to check/make sure they could do. E.g.can they access their email/login using chrome/access drive/find files/make a folder/make a document/share a document/access the blog/access Google calendar etc. Another challenge I found was that we created a blog for sharing and I was surprised by peoples hesitations around using it. I found people were concerned about the time factor, so I would encourage your staff do do things like bogging but also emphasise that they don't have to be long, they can just be brief ideas/reflections etc. Talking them through the labels etc. offering to support your staff with their first posts etc. Sometimes you have to put time in to get the buy in.
Emails were a huge learning curve for us, because everyone was on different email systems. If you are a school all your emails are in one place so I would recommend just doing the whole merge all at once don't change to GAFE and stay on exchange, do it all at once.
Another thing we tried was a weekly optional session on Google Apps. It will depend on what suits your staff and where they are at. Some sessions we had a number of people, others we had none. Teachers are tired at the end of the day so it really depends on if you are making it a separate meeting or perhaps part of a staff meeting. I would set up a document before the session so that people could add questions, it was a way that I could be some what prepared for an impromptu session just in case they had things I needed to research if I didn't know the answer to support them. I added the answers to that document after the session so that people who missed it or attended could go back and view/review. I would turn up and literally say 'right, create a doc, lets have a play, I want you to do this, this and this' so it wasn't something I spent hours preparing it was just 'lets do slides' or 'lets do sheets' based on peoples questions or what they wanted to know more about.
At the teacher only day this year I did a Google Challenge, so that we could see where people were at three terms on. They got into teams and we did pop quizzes so that we could see where peoples heads were at, it wasn't until we got into the much harder stuff that they stopped being able to answer, which gave me a really good indication of where they were at and our next steps.
Our current challenges are getting people to use their calenders. People getting their head around how to use them, how to access other peoples calendars, how to share them etc. Also using and utilising Google Apps on our iPad/iPhone devices. Taking videos for example, so easy to just upload directly to YouTube and then edit them directly, rather than people spending hours down loading to movie maker, editing them, exporting them, then re-uploading again to YouTube.
My main challenge for the year was the practical experience, where people were at with how they interact with computers and their experiences. I was alarmed to come across Macs that hadn't had iOS updates for three years, people who didn't update their antivirus programs and also not updating their Windows. The updates pop up and people close them. Although another thing that has driven me mad is the Ask Bar/Bing that came with some of the Java/Avast updates because people were not unticking the box. I didn't realise that some people don't read those pop ups and Google what they mean if they are unsure. Digital citizenship was another thing, we plug it to our students but teachers need to think about it too. Google Drive is collaborative, collaborating involves a lot of things like not deleting other peoples work, being patient with people etc. so that has been a challenge, just learning how to do all those things. Change is another biggie. People don't like change and at the same time they love it. You have people who embrace it and people who fight it. Time in general as well. Some people will take the time to go home and have a play, then email you in a week and say 'look I've done this and tried to share it, it didn't work, can you help me'. Which is fantastic because then you can work together and problem solve and help them work through it. But then you have other people who say 'I just don't have time', which is hard, because I don't 'have' the time either, so I empathise. But this is happening. It is happening now. It is the future. If you aren't going to learn how to do it then sooner or later, you're going to have a problem. Change/making time, it is always going to be a challenge, I'd love to know how other people get around this difficulty.
The awesome thing about Google Apps for Education is the collaboration aspect. Listening to people talk (and it ties in with the digital citizenship), about how three of them are based in different schools and they are all creating a document together. They know that it's possible but when they are actually doing it, it's very different because they are getting the experience of how amazing that is. When people tell you about their experiences with collaborative documents and you can hear the excitement in their voice over the phone it's a fantastic feeling. That kind of feedback has made this experience so worth while, it's not 100% buy in with all teachers but the people who are doing these things are fabulous. The flow on affect is also a big factor, RTLB's are in lots of different schools. I'm finding more and more they are working with students who have Chromebooks and now that they are in Drive they have more of an idea how to support these students and what they are doing. It's good validation that we are doing the right thing and that there is a good reason we are doing this. The confidence and experimenting is also fantastic, I'm always presently surprised by who has the confidence to step outside of their bubble and with some of the things people are doing. Some of those people are also open to sharing what they are doing with others which is fantastic because it gives other people a shock sometimes to see what fantastic things other people are doing that they aren't.
Where to next for me, if I continued in this role, would be digital badges. Waveney Bryant (@wavesbryant) actually did a fabulous session on Visible Learning using Badges which you should check out if you are interested. More and more people are getting into digital appraisals so that would where to head to next. To set up rubrics and badges for teachers to work towards for adding to digital portfolios/appraisals/sites etc.
Please feel free to get in contact with me via twitter @missnwalden if you have any questions.
All other resources are available in the folder below:
Google Summit 2015 Auckland
No comments:
Post a Comment