Tag Archives: technology

Empowering students and teachers: navigating AI in schools

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An AI ‘takeover’ in schools is often portrayed as being inevitable and the teaching profession has little control over it. That teacher skepticism to AI tools is a barrier to “progress”. This false narrative displaces teachers as the experts of teaching and learning. Is student uptake of AI more unprecedented than expected? Yes. Can more be done in the space of professional support for teachers? Yes, a lot more. This is why Michael Sciffer and I led a session at the Quality Teaching in Practice Conference (QTiP25) at Newcastle University. We aimed to show teachers how they can empower their students to become ethical and critical learners in the age of AI; to challenge situations when AI diminishes rich learning opportunities. When we designed our session, we found the space was dominated by for-profit technology companies promoting their AI products (often under the guise of professional learning and teaching resources). What was missing was supporting teachers to teach students how to have conversations on the ethical and critical use of AI, and challenge each other’s assumptions, from academic situations to everyday life scenarios. That’s what our QTiP25 session focused on and this blog post summarises our session and resources. Our session was strongly influenced, and builds on, the fantastic professional learning on generative AI from NSW Department of Education.

Literature scan

Our literature scan draws on the Australian Framework for Generative AI in Schools along with Australian research to focus on:

  • Can teachers exercise professional control over AI?
  • Is Gen AI intelligent?
  • What are the limits of AI?
  • What are the harms of AI?
  • What are the necessary student skills to engage with Gen AI in a critical, ethical and creative fashion?
AI literature scanDownload

Thinking scaffold to decide IF and HOW AI should be used

We adapted the GENAI assessment scale into a thinking scaffold that school-aged students and teachers can use to discuss how AI and enhance and diminish their learning. The scaffold has six levels of AI integration and asks students/teachers to think about the positives (pluses), negatives (minuses) and interesting considerations for each level of AI integration. Students/ teachers then use scaffold to decide and justify on a level of AI integration that would best enhance their learning. the The scaffold can be used to co-create agreed expectations of the uses of AI in a range of learning tasks, projects and units of work. The scaffold is designed to be used in small group situations, but can used individually.

Download a copy of the AI thinking scaffold here. Make a copy of the document to edit to meet the needs of students and teachers in your context.

Classroom conversations to co-create expectations of AI use

After each small group completes the AI thinking scaffold, the group nominates one representative to join a Socratic seminar. To support students (and teachers) to have robust conversations to co-create agreed expectations of AI use from diverse opinions, we selected specific Socratic sentence starters. The sentence starters are selected to encourage students (and teachers) to present different views, challenge each other’s assumptions, to ask each other to justify their reasoning and to support each other.

Download the Socratic sentence starters here.

More for students and teachers to think about

We also designed additional scenarios for students and teachers to think about where the use of AI extends beyond a learning activity and the classroom. They are designed to be used with the Socractic sentence starters to challenge the impacts of AI use in the context of integrity, equity, honesty and essentially, what it means to be human.

Download the scenarios here.

Conclusion

Our session at the QTiP25 conference emphasised the importance of equipping teachers and students with the skills to engage critically and ethically with AI. By enabling robust discussions to co-create expectations around AI use, teachers, as the experts of teaching and learning, can lead their students to collectively decide how AI is used (or not used at all) to enhance and protect rich learning opportunities.

Tech tips from teachers for teachers

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Are you a pre-service teacher about to do your practicum? Or are you a graduate teacher about to enter the profession? Wondering how to effectively use technology as a teacher and with your students, in a way that enhances your wellbeing?

I recently presented at a pre-service teachers conference at University of Technology, Sydney on using technology effectively in the classroom. Here are the highlights of the session. These tips are targeted at pre-service teachers about to go on their practicums and graduate teachers about to enter the classroom.

Google or Microsoft? (or Canvas or everything?)

Many schools will use mainly Google or Microsoft. For Google, this may mean all classes use Google Classroom and the apps that come with Google Workspace for Education such as Google Docs and Google Slides. For Microsoft, this may mean all classes use Microsoft Teams and OneNote Class Notebook. Other schools will use Canvas. Some schools will use a mixture of everything. Before you start teaching at your new school, ask which platforms the students you will be teaching will mostly use so you can become familiar with them. Ask to be added to other teachers’ Google Classrooms and Microsoft Teams (same year level if possible and same subject) so you can see what they’re doing with their classes. My school uses Google Classroom with students and I always add beginning teachers to my Google Classrooms when they ask. That way, they can reuse my posts on their Google Classrooms as a way to support them to develop their craft. For more details on how I use Google Classroom, see this post.

Get WiFi access BEFORE your practicum

This tip is mainly for pre-service teachers doing practicums in a NSW public school. When you first contact your supervising teacher or in your pre-practicum, ask them how to get a NSW Department of Education account for pre-service teachers so you can log into the WiFi. You are not suppose to ask others to log on for you and you don’t want to be using your mobile phone hotspot for your whole practicum. GET THIS ORGANISED BEFORE YOU START YOUR PRAC!

Digital wellbeing

Many teachers (including me) have work apps like Outlook, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams and Sentral on our personal phones and tablets where everything is synced across. This can be very convenient (For example, I usually have my laptop connected to the interactive panel to display the lesson starter activity and I mark the roll on my phone.).However, this also means your work can slowly creep into your personal life and you find yourself responding to every ‘ping’ from your work apps on your personal devices. Everyone has a different way of working and you have to find out what works for you while respecting your colleagues’ personal time and the school systems policies. Here are some considerations:

  • Learn how to schedule send emails (and Teams chat messages) so if you want to write a message in the evening after work hours because it is fresh in your mind, you can have the message land in your colleagues’ emails or Teams chat during work hours. This means you can work the way you want and respect others’ personal time. If you are a pre-service teacher, ask your supervising teacher how they work outside of school hours so everyone has a shared understanding of contact outside school hours.
  • Set expectations for your students. This is particularly relevant for high school. Teenagers often do school work in the evenings, at night (sometimes in the early hours of the morning) and on weekends. I tell my students they can post on Google Classroom at any time, but I will look at their posts and respond on Monday to Friday between 8am and 5pm. I have separate expectations in the school holiday period, depending on the circumstances. If you are a pre-service teacher, ask your supervising teacher what their expectations are for the classes you are taking.
  • If you choose to have work apps on your personal phone, know the privacy implications for the relevant school system. Move these work apps to the last screen of your phone so they’re not immediately visible and available for you to tap when you unlock your phone. Explore features like Focus mode, Personal mode and Do Not Disturb mode to see if and how they work for you.

Tips from teachers for teachers

And finally here are the tips from teachers, deputy principals and principals (who I highly respect and are known for their educational technology expertise and innovations) specifically for pre-service teachers and beginning teachers. 🙂 A big thank you to every one of them for sharing their advice.

Goal setting for students: how to use OneNote Class Notebook to set students up for success

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Every student I’ve worked with wants to do well at school. But what does this look like for each student and how do they get there? This is where goal setting can be very powerful.

Goal setting is a well-known strategy to improve student motivation, resilience and academic achievement. Doing a Google Search will bring up many articles supporting this. Some of my favourite ones are from Edutopia and What Works Best from the NSW Department of Education.

But what does goal setting look like in a classroom and how can it be implemented sustainably and consistently? In this post, I will share what has worked (and what hasn’t worked) for me in leading the implementation of goal setting for over 200 students and involving 20 teachers. I have packaged the latest collection of promising practices into a OneNote notebook, which teachers and download and customise.

So, these are the strategies, practices and resources that have worked for me (all are in the OneNote notebook).

Supporting students to help students set SMART goals

S = specific
M = measurable
A = achievable
R = realistic
T = time-bound

SMART provided a framework for students to set personalised goals that are personal, aspirational and realistic. SMART also reduces the number of well-intentioned goals where progress and success are difficult to measure, such as “try harder in maths”, “get better grades” and “concentrate more in class”. Some videos I’ve found useful in explaining SMART goals to students are Setting Goals from BrainPOP and  How to write a SMART goal from Khan Academy and

But it isn’t enough to know what SMART goals are. I found students needed a comprehensive scaffold, particularly in:

Breaking down goals into smaller mini goals

I included this in the ‘specific’ section of SMART. When students have identified a goal, they are guided to identify three smaller steps to achieve the goal. This was important for students to track and assess their progress. The smaller goals not only help students to work towards their goals but also allow them to see success and stay motivated when they have achieved a smaller goal.

Identifying barriers and ways to overcome them

This part was optional for my students but for those who did it, it allowed them to see if their original goal was realistic for them and/or identify ways to remove known obstacles that may stop them from achieving their goal.

Sharing progress and accomplishments with family

My prior attempts with goal setting have largely involved it being a very personal experience for the student. Students completed a goal setting resource and at the end of the semester, they reflected on whether they had achieved their goal.

There was nothing wrong with the above approach, but to make the goal setting process more meaningful, I now have students write a personal reflection comment that goes onto their end-of-semester academic report. Students know the intended audience of the comment is themselves and their parents/carers. The personal reflection comment acts as a culminating product that nicely wraps up a yearly goal setting process.

And now to tie all the promising practices into one delivery mechanism – OneNote Class Notebook.

Why OneNote is the best tech tool for goal setting

I have used hardcopy booklets, Google Doc, Google Slides and Google Forms to deliver goal setting programs. It is OneNote Class Notebook that has been the most effective in delivering a responsive goal setting program, particularly for a large group of students that is being delivered by a large number of teachers. How does OneNote Class Notebook do this?

  • Supporting consistent implementation by offering a baseline resource package that can be used as is but has the flexibility to be customisable. This means teachers who are very new to goal setting have a resource they can take straight to their class and the teachers who are more experienced with goal setting can modify the resource to suit their needs and their students’ needs.
  • Providing ease of monitoring – OneNote Class Notebook allows the teachers who are leading the program to see the progress of every student in every class. This means we didn’t have to wait for scheduled meetings and self-reporting processes to identify which students/classes/teachers may need additional support. We can see how everyone is going anytime and be proactive in providing support.
  • Allowing ongoing, responsive adjustments – This is where OneNote Class Notebook has outshined the other tools. With hardcopy resources and Google Workspace apps, once the resource has been printed/distributed, it is overly complex to adjust it. With OneNote Class Notebook, resources can be distributed one page at a time so future resources can be prepared, adjusted based on feedback if needed and distributed when a student or class is ready. OneNote Class Notebook is like a digital binder so every page that is distributed still feels like and appears to be a cohesive package. It’s not a bunch of separate Google Doc files, a bunch of different Google Classroom assignment posts or a bundle of hardcopy papers.

The teachers leading the goal setting program created instructional videos on the technical aspects of OneNote Class Notebook such as how students get to their OneNote notebook and the structure of their OneNote notebook. This meant teachers who are not confident with OneNote could use the instructional video to guide their students. We also provided in-class team teaching for teachers who requested it.

The goal setting OneNote package

Download the Goal Setting OneNote notebook for your students. See here for more information on how to use OneNote Class Notebook to further customise the notebook and distribute it to your students. If you do use the resource, I would love to hear your feedback.

Acknowledgements

Using OneNote to be more organised as a teacher

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Being organised is essential in teaching. Every teacher has a teacher planner where you do your lesson plans, track student progress, monitor the progress of your goals, record professional learning notes, record meeting notes and much more.

I have never found a commercial teacher planner to suit my needs and over the last 5 years, I have created and refined my own teacher planner in OneNote. Here’s the structure of my OneNote digital planner.

Sections structure

I have a very straight forward section structure. For me this is the right amount of sections to stay organised and not be overwhelmed by too many sections. I have a section for:

  • Yearly organisation
  • Term 1
  • Term 2
  • Term 3
  • Notes for School 1
  • Notes for School 2
  • Meetings
  • Misc
Screenshot of OneNote digital planner section structure showing the sections listed above.

Yearly organisation section

This section has two pages – a cover page and a yearly calendar from NSW Education.

Image of teacher planner cover page
Image of yearly calendar

Term 1, 2, 3 and 4 sections

These sections have the same pages. Each section has a page for each school week. Each page has a table format for lesson plans for each day and period, a column for a daily to-do list and a column for tracking the progress long-term projects. For the daily to-do list, I use the To-Do tags in OneNote to check off a task when I finish it. Whatever I don’t get done, I cut and paste it to the next day or week.

I like having my lesson plans, to-do list and long-term projects presented on one page so I am not flicking back and forth between different pages, which I found I did not like with hardcopy planners.

School notes section

These sections hold notes for the two different schools I work at this year. For my main school, I have pages to track homework and classwork completion. I have created a custom tag to check off student work.

Meetings section

This section has been set up so the same meetings notes template is created each time a new page is added.

Why I prefer OneNote for my teacher planner

I have tried various hardcopy planners and digital apps for lesson planning, but have found OneNote to be the best. My main reasons are being able to:

  • Sync my planner across my Surface Pro, iPhone and iPad. This means I always have access to my planner in most situations.
  • Use digital ink with the Surface Pen and Apple Pencil, which is extremely useful for annotations.
  • Email pages in my OneNote to colleagues or students if I need to. This is particularly useful for meeting notes.

What kind of teacher planner do you use? I’d love to learn from teachers how they use a planner to stay organised.

3 ways to stay organised with Google Classroom

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This year I teach Year 7 maths, year 7 science and Year 12 chemistry in a large high school. Working in a large high school means that no one has their own classrooms. Homerooms are non-existent. My school has a fortnightly timetable cycle with each 50-minute lessons. I am in at least 10 different classrooms in a fortnight. This means every 50 minutes, I am setting up and packing up in a different classroom, utilising different audiovisual equipment and working with a different seating layout. Learning time can be easily wasted if I don’t have a system and a consistent routine for me and my students as we move from room to room. So here are three ways I use Google Classroom to make it easier for me and my students to stay organised and maximise learning time.

Every lesson and every detail are on Google Classroom
I post every lesson with every worksheet, slide deck, website, video and anything else I use for a lesson is on Google Classroom. This includes the lesson’s learning intention and success criteria for my Year 7 classes, and the syllabus content points for my Year 12 chemistry class. This means I can walk into any classroom, connect my laptop to the display screen and my entire lesson and everything I need is ready to go. I don’t need to waste time looking for files in File Explorer or my Google Drive. Everything is already in the lesson post on Google Classroom. This maximises learning time as it allows a more seamless lesson flow. It also minimises classroom management issues and cuts down on transition points.

At my school, every student has their own device, so I encourage my students to have the same resources opened on their device as I am going through them on the classroom display screen. This is very helpful for students who may have difficulty seeing the screen clearly for a variety of reasons. Students can also work at their own pace if we are making notes from slides that I’m using so the students who work faster can move on and the students who need more time can take more time.

Having every lesson posted on Google Classroom, lesson by lesson, also makes registrations so much easier.

A lesson post on Google Classroom for my Year 7 class
A lesson post on Google Classroom for my Year 12 class

Lesson starter activity is on Google Classroom

I start every lesson with Quick Quiz, which is a bell ringer activity that the class completes in silence as soon as they enter the classroom. The Quick Quiz is a series of questions based on previous content the class has learnt. I use the Quick Quiz for retrieval practice and as a classroom management strategy. The students know as soon as they walk into the classroom, they do the Quick Quiz. This gives me time to mark the roll, check uniform and set up for the lesson. Each lesson’s Quick Quiz is on Google Slides which is placed on the top of their Google Classroom Classwork. I use to handwrite the Quick Quiz on the whiteboard, but found having the Quick Quiz prepared before the lesson results in a smoother start to the lesson.

Quick Quiz Google Slides is in a post that is sorted to be on top of Google Classroom in the Classwork tab, which makes it really easy for me and my students to access at the start of each lesson.
An example Quick Quiz question for my Year 12 chemistry class
An example Quick Quiz question for my Year 12 chemistry class

Lessons are posted on Google Classroom the day before

I post every lesson on Google Classroom in the afternoon the day before the lesson. This allows students to have a preview of the lesson before they walk into the lesson. I encourage my students to log onto Google Classroom in the evening or in the morning before school, so they know the type of learning to expect for the day ahead.  I find that when students know what to expect ahead of time, they are more settled and there are fewer classroom management issues. Some of my Year 12 students like to read the slides the night before if they have time so they can better understand the content when I explain it in class.

These three strategies are not unique to Google Classroom and can be adapted to other digital tools like Microsoft Teams. The key is using technology to facilitate routines that allow you to maximise learning time and feel less frantic when you set up a lesson.

Revamping learning logs (with downloadable and adaptable template)

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Last year I trialled digital learning logs with my Year 7 maths and science class, which you can read about here. Overall, I found it beneficial as my students were given regularly dedicated time to reflect on their learning, with a focus on what work they are proud of, the challenges they faced, how they overcame these challenges and what they can do differently next time. While students appreciated the time to stop and think about their learning, time was also a barrier to this initiative. Sometimes it felt like there was no time to do this and if we used lesson time to reflect, then we will fall behind. This challenge became very obvious in the last term of the year when students had a large number of assessments and end-of-year activities that we missed some of our dedicated time for learning logs.

So I’ve created the third iteration of the learning log, which only has six weekly reflection activities and a goal setting/tracking page that is equivalent to two weekly reflection activities. So there is a total of eight weekly activities, which provides a buffer for other things that come up during the term like assessments, excursions, incursions and other disruptions. I’ve changed some of the reflection activities to embed more extended writing which may be more suitable for older students. I’ve also incorporated an ACE score in some of the activities, which is a student self-assessment on their attitude, commitment and effort. This was inspired by Trangie Central School.

You can download your own copy of the learning log template to adapt and use with your students.

OfficeMix in a BYOD classroom

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Last term I had the privilege of team teaching with a colleague who is teaching a Year 7 class this year for English, Maths, Science, Geography and History (at my school Year 7s are taught these subjects by the same teacher as a middle years strategy). This class, like many classes, consisted of students of varying ability levels and were learning English as an additional language. We wanted to utilise technology in a way that enabled more differentiation. personalised learning and more opportunities for teachers to help students one-to-one.

So we decided to use OfficeMix to flip the classroom. We didn’t flip the classroom in the traditional sense of getting students to watch video tutorials at home and then do activities in class. Instead, we did a brief introduction of the lesson (eg. brainstorm, linking the lesson’s content to previous learning, pre-loading metalanguage) then students watched an OfficeMix presentation on their own devices with a follow-up activities (eg. quiz or a worksheet). Students were told they can watch the OfficeMix presentation as many times as they need to in order to complete the follow-up activities successfully. This meant some students only watched the OfficeMix presentations once or twice while other students watched it many times. When students found the follow-up activities challenging, they were able to watch the OfficeMix presentation to work out how to do it. This allowed me and the teacher I was team teaching with to offer intensive one-to-one support to the students who needed it most.

Here’s an example of one of the OfficeMix presentations we used for this class:

https://mix.office.com/embed/ny5p5aabe06m

Using video tutorials is not new but what I like about OfficeMix is that it utlises PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a software that many teachers are familiar with so it is an easy step-up for for them to use the OfficeMix add-on. Many teachers already have many existing content presented in PowerPoint so they can easily turn them into video tutorials with minimum workload. What I personally found the most useful is that OfficeMix presentations works on all devices. The class I was teaching in had students bringing Surface Pro’s, Windows laptops, Macbooks, iPads, iPhones and Android phones. OfficeMix worked on all of them.

My next step is to have students making their own OfficeMix presentations to show their learning.

How schools and teachers can use Periscope

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periscope

Periscope is a recently-released app from Twitter that allows you to live broadcast. What’s different about it in comparison to other digital tools for live broadcasting is that it lets you have a conversation with others viewing the live broadcast via ‘tweets’ (I don’t know the official name but when you watch a live broadcast on Periscope, you can type text in the ‘say something’ box and the text appears over the broadcast).

I’m currently playing around with Periscope for personal and professional use. Periscope has so many opportunities for schools. Here are some ideas:

Live broadcast major school events

Schools can live broadcast events like awards and carnivals. Parents, families and the community can watch these events live wherever they are.

Professional learning

This is where I think it’s the most exciting potential for Periscope for education. Learning from observing other teachers is one of the most valuable professional learning for teachers. However, a lot of the times it is restricted to observing colleagues at your own school. With Periscope, lessons can be live broadcasted. Multiple teachers can observe live online and ‘chat’ about the lesson via the text conversation feature of the app. The teacher being observed can then watch the saved video of this with the text conversation as feedback. This can also be used for pre-service teachers at university. They can watch a number of lessons back-to-back and have online conversations that is overlayed on the video.

There’s so much potential for Periscope in education. I can’t wait to see how teachers and schools use it. How are you and your school using Periscope?

Note: If you’re a teacher, please consult your Principal or education authority before using Periscope

My 4 goals for 2014

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an image of two people drawing targets

In New South Wales, Australia, the 2014 school year is just about to start so I thought I’d share with you my 4 professional goals for 2014.

Goal #1 – Keeping science real

2013 was the year where I started the journey of connecting my students with current, practising Australian scientists. This was a response to our students’ survey responses that they did not know many careers or jobs that science can lead them to. They also did not know what scientists actually do. Many students have accountants, tradespeople, bankers, etc within their families or family friends but students often do not have exposure to scientists in their everyday lives (ask a student to name a scientist and they’ll still tell you Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein; they rarely name a living scientist). We wanted to make science real in the sense that we can put real people’s faces to what the students learn in the classroom. So in 2013 our school connected with Scientists and Mathematicians in Schools, where we are now partnered with scientist Melina Georgousakis. Melina has already spoken to our Year 8s and 9s on her journey to becoming a scientist, what she does in her job and explained how the immune system and vaccinations work (that’s her area of expertise). In our end-of-topic survey, a lot of our year 9s listed Melina’s visit as the best activity of the topic. In their words the best part of the topic was “when the lady came in to talk about vaccines”. In 2014 we have plans for our Year 12 Biology students to work with Melina when they explore the immune system more deeply.

2014 will also be the year where I want to utilise social media and technology to connect students with scientists, not just in Australia but from around the world. In 2013 social media led me to connect with a postgraduate student called Ash from the University of Technology, Sydney, where he came to the school and spoke to Year 8s about his work with sharks (Year 8s were learning about the role of sharks in the ecosystem and how removing sharks as apex predators impact on the ecosystem). We also connected with Dr Mel Thompson from Deakin University and Dr Karl via Skype. In 2014 I am hoping to expand to using Twitter to connect with my students with scientists. I want to create a class Twitter account for my students and connect with scientists on Twitter. There’s so many of them such as @realscientists and Dr Cameron Webb.

Goal #2 – Embed science communication into my teaching

I was very privileged to be involved in the UTS Summer School this year where I worked with Christy, a former Questacon presenter (a science communicator who does science shows for children). She re-emphasised to me the importance of designing learning that drives students’ curiosity and create learning experiences that are memorable. One of my biggest gripes with science education is that it uses flash-bang experiments inappropriately. You hear lots of students say they just want to do pracs. You hear a lot of teachers say that all students want to do are pracs. A lot of the times I think showy experiments are wasted at school as they only serve as entertainment. Christy re-emphasised to me that showy experiments need to be set up in a way that drives students to want to know the science WHY something has happened and the journey to understanding they experience must be memorable. This can mean turning explanations into stories, plays, musical items.

One of the ideas I have this year is to have a science communication project where students work in small groups and become science communicators themselves where they design and perform an act that explains a scientific concept. If I could I’d like to make this a cross-curricular project with Drama.

Goal #3 – Making learning, thinking and understanding visible

This year is where our faculty applies the Structured Observed Learning Framework (SOLO) for all students in Year 9. We have used this year’s implementation of the new syllabus for the Australian Curriculum as a drive for this change. See this previous post for more details. The challenge (not so much a goal) will be to evaluate the impact on student learning.

Goal #4 – A better work/life balance

Over the last few years I realise that looking after yourself is a one of the most important jobs for teachers. After reading this post on 10 tips for slowing down, I really want to make sure that my entire faculty’s wellbeing is well looked after this year. I tend to be someone who doesn’t know when to stop. I feel guilty when I’m not doing work related to school. When I’m relaxing it feels like I’m doing some kind of injustice to my students’ education. I love my job but I’m no use to my students if I burn out. From the post on 10 tips for slowing down, I want to make these changes:

  • Allocate time to opening and closing meetings

Schools are such busy places that many teachers schedule meetings right on bell times so that we are rushing from one place to another. This year I want meetings where people are now running from their classrooms, crashing down and then expected to immediately adjust their mindframes. I’m hoping that simple things like having meetings start 5-10 minutes after the bell will avoid that rush feeling that make people stress.

  • Make time to eat

Eating recess and lunch is my other goal for wellbeing this year. While this seems self-explanatory, I know many teachers don’t eat, or sit down, or even visit the bathroom during school hours because there’s just so much to do. I’m not sure how successful I’ll be at this but this year I want to reduce the number of times where I eat my sandwich while driving home.

A story in 2 minutes – a multimedia activity for all subjects

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My principal shared this video with me today. It’s called Our Story in 2 Minutes. The video summarises the Earth’s history from the Big Bang till now in two minutes.

This inspired me to come up with some similar story-in-2-minutes activities where students can create a video using images only to represent the development of an event. It doesn’t even have to be two minutes. It can be one minute, three minutes, however long you and your students like. A video of images can be made to sequence the events in the evolution of life on Earth, the development of our current understanding of the universe, development of the cell theory, development of our understanding of genetics … the list goes on and on and it can be used in subjects other than science.

What I like about this activity is that it’s simple and yet allows students to create and engage in deep learning that extends from a subject area and even be part of a cross-KLA activity. It’s simple for both students and teachers as it involves searching and selecting images that represents certain ideas and events and then inserting the images into a video-editing program such as Windows Movie Maker or even PowerPoint. Technology tools that don’t require a high level of technical expertise from either teachers or students and are available to most students. The activity is also simple in the sense that it does not have to take long, which can be a good activity to suggest to teachers who are concerned about being pressed for time.

To create stories in 2 minutes also allow students the opportunity to learn about digital citizenship. Can students use any images pulled from the web? Do they have to search for creative commons images? How do they acknowledge the source of images? This activity is not only about the content of a subject area.

Finally creating stories in 2 minutes can be adapted into project-based learning or provide an opportunity to create a product that can be shared with a public audience beyond the classroom. Creating a story in 2 minutes require students to first understand the content, select and justify appropriate images that best represent the content and sequence them in a logical order. It allows students to apply higher order thinking skills.

I teach in Sydney, Australia so my school year is starting in about a week’s time. I will be definitely using the story-in-2-minutes concept this year.

What will you use it for?