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Marmite: Love it or Hate it? – Using Google Forms and Twitter
82 years ago
Over the next two weeks in our year 5 class we will be exploring data investigation and the tools with which we can use to undertake them. The first three days of this week we will be looking at some technology that can enhance data handling and make our life easier. In today’s session we learned about Google Forms and I demonstrated how they work with the help of my Twitter network.
We wanted to achieve three things from our maths session today
- Make a short survey using a Google Form.
- Complete other people’s surveys and get a feel for the process.
- Review the data added to our own and explore some of the ways it is represented.
After placing the lesson in the context you see in the first paragraph, I began the session by explaining that I was going to use my Twitter network to help demonstrate how we can use Google Forms to collect data.
I spent some time with the class going through the process of creating a Form from the Google Docs home screen and then adding my questions and running through the different types of questions you can use. We talked a lot about how this type of data collection is only good for some occasions and a pencil and paper method can still be the best way. It is a matter of choosing the most appropriate.
The class would be making a simple favourites or preference type survey and so our shared one was similar. You can see it embedded in the post below.
Once complete, I sent out the link to this to my Twitter network (Look at the bottom of the Form edit page for the link – I used bit.ly to shorten it for Twitter, more on that later!) I did this because I wanted the children to see data being added, I wanted to demonstrate the moment of data submission from the Google Form. This also helps the children see how a spreadsheet is linked to the form. (15 minutes)
We switched to the spreadsheet and the children thought it was rather magical as the responses started to drop into the cells as we watched. I reminded them that as soon as someone clicks SUBMIT we were seeing the result.
The children then worked in groups of three with a single laptop (2 groups per table) – one of the children signed into their Google Docs (part of Google Apps for Education) account and created their own “Favourites” Google Form. To keep the children focused I asked them to only give 5 choices for their questions otherwise they tend to get longwinded and only create one or two questions. (15 minutes)
One of the useful things about writing up lesson experiences on my blog is that it is wonderful to go back and look at what I learned and make adjustments to lessons. With some of these things in mind, once the groups had made their Forms, rather than share via email etc (this just adds a complication) we clicked on the Live Form link at the foot of the page.
So everyone had on their laptop screens their form and I asked them to simply change places with those on their table and complete each others’ surveys. They then moved around the classroom adding their responses to other forms from other groups. Although it is nice to share via email, in my experience of working with Google Forms and lots of children it is much easier to move the children rather than share the Form. The children certainly got more responses this way and contributed more, there was less in the way.
After each child had submitted their responses they clicked on the Go Back to the form link which reset the form for the next child – this worked out really well. (15 minutes)
Up to this point the children were able to appreciate how Google Forms is a great way to gather information and how it organises it for us in the spreadsheet.
Back at their own Google Form the children spent some time exploring the results Summary page to look at how their data can be represented. (5 minutes)
As a class we returned to our Edu Favourites survey of educators in my Twitter network. By the end of my second session we had over 125 responses and it was a great pool of data to explore. Real data from real people that we literally witnessed being entered. I was able to ask children lots of questions from how it was represented. It proved to be a great plenary. Here are the results from the survey, there are currently 170 responses – thankyou if you were one of them. (5 minutes)
As a final exploration of this whole process you could explore the link data. I used bit.ly to shorten the long Google Form URL. bit.ly provides traffic data, with a free account, and you can show the class where the people clicking on the form are from. Currently there have been 269 clicks on the Edu Favourites form link and here is where everyone is from.
You could even do some work on how many didn’t fill in the form and compare it to those who did.
Thankyou for taking the time to help with our maths lesson today, I am always so grateful for your contributions – and some of you have even gone away wondering what Marmite is – life will never be the same again. By the way I hate it too!
#TBlesson Using Twitter to Explore the Language of Probability
102 years ago
Two years ago I had the idea of using replies from my Twitter network to gather responses about the probability of snow. What was planned as a plenary to a session ended up being expanded into a full hour long lesson. This week I taught the same maths topic and this post outlines the approach I took this year to my lesson.
Context
![P260210_15.49[03]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4389979401_89532f5496_b.jpg)
This was the second lesson in the week – the first was a basic introduction to some of terminology in basic probability of events. We talked about the ways we would describe events such as a deer jumping through the window or a cat wandering into the classroom. We then looked at a load of different statements and positioned them on the scale: IMPOSSIBLE – UNLIKELY- POSSIBLE – PROBABLE – CERTAIN. The Twitter lesson would extend this understanding of the language used by exploring the tweets from my network.
Set-up
One of the things I have written about before is the planned tweets that should take place before a lesson if you want to do this type of lesson. You can elicit responses on the spot, live, but you have much more control over how you use the responses if you allow yourself some time to do so. I tweeted this the day before and encouraged as many responses as I could:
With a good handle on the sort of responses I was getting I could plan to make the tweets into any sort of resource I wanted. Another reason to tweet early is to encourage members of your network in other countries to participate. This was crucial to the probability question I was posing.
As the lesson was beginning I repeated my request which bolstered the responses that were coming in live, indeed it gave some people the chance to adjust their snow estimates from the previous day.
Hashtag
At the end of the tweet you can see that I have asked people to respond using the hashtag #TBlesson. In terms of organisation this allowed me to easily copy and paste from a Twitter search page into a Google Doc. If you leave it to your replies you will have to edit out all of the odds and ends that are not relevant to your lesson which is time consuming.
Resources
- I decided that this time I wanted the tweets to be something the children could hold. I turned the digital into analogue and printed the tweets off. They were laminated and cut into individual cards. We made 3 sets for the different activities in the lesson.
- For the location activity we had 2 floor maps of the UK and Europe. I also had a SMART Notebook file from previous years that had tweets and a world map to work with.
- Finally I cleared some of the tables away and used masking tape to make a great big probability scale on the floor. I printed off some labels using the language from the previous day and placed them accordingly.
- 5 or 6 laptops for the location activity.
- The children’s maths books and pencil crayons.
Introduction
Using the #TBlesson hashtag I displayed a Visible Tweets presentation as the children were coming in from playtime. They were soon enthralled as the responses span and twisted their way onto the IWB display. I listened as the children began pointing out something to a friend or spotting a particular country.
I began by talking about my network on Twitter and how I had used it to find out about the chances of snow across the world. We spent some time watching the random display of tweets from the search and we talked about the language we discussed in the previous day and if we could see any examples of people using it.
I think Visible Tweets is an excellent way to display Twitter replies and I would highly recommend it if you are doing the same. This is another reason to use a hashtag when gathering responses as it is much easier and more controlled if you are displaying a specific search term.
In the image you can see a Tweetdeck column – this is another useful tip. I deleted all of the other Twitter columns and I was left with the #TBlesson hashtag search I had running. A simple and easy way to focus your classroom display on just what you need to show.
Listen to me introducing the session to my class. “Twitter Lesson Audio“
Activities
The children were put into mixed ability pairs and we had 5 pairs on each of the three carousel stations. After a 10 minute introduction I rotated these groups every 15 minutes which would allow some time for a short conclusion too.
Location
I wanted the children to begin to explore the location of the responses and to think about the climate of different parts of the world. The children had two floor maps of the UK and Europe to place a set of the tweet cards on (I filtered the cards appropriately). There was also the IWB which had a world map and a bunch of tweets from previous years.
I put out half a dozen laptops for the children to use to help them locate some of the places mentioned in the tweets. All of the children decided to use Google Earth to help them find the places and they then placed the cards on the floor maps.
The children had the option to use the technology to support them if they wanted and were confident enough to know the correct tool to help them. This is a good example of children independently choosing a technology to support their learning.
Probability Scale
There were many fascinating mathematical discussions in this group about the best place to put the different cards on the large scale. The children were having to interpret the plethora of terminology in the tweets and match them to the commonly used language on the scale.
This was a good challenge and the children worked in pairs to support each other in positioning the different statements. All three groups put the statements neatly above and below each other along the scale, even though many were the same. I extended their thinking by inviting them to place them alongside each other if they were equivalent.
A further step was to get pairs to check a small section for accuracy and to look closely at the ordering. I was able to direct different pairs or individuals to review the position of specific tweets that I knew would challenge them appropriately. (For example someone used 0.05)
Language Examples
![P260210_15.43[02]](http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4057/4390748466_32d73fcc7d_b.jpg)
In the third activity the children simply gathered examples of the language used, writing these out in their books. This would eventually lead us to a major conclusion we made as a class in the plenary.
This fairly straight forward task meant the children were really engaging with the variety of terms used and their records helped them to see the breadth of it.
They recorded fractions, decimals and percentages as well as slang and local phrases used for likelihood.
Reviewing the lesson and the language used
As a whole group we finished the lesson by discussing the different language that we had encountered during the session and shared some of the ways people were using it. We briefly explored the climate differences between locations and heard some examples of places that had an impossible chance of snow.
We concluded that the majority of people used percentages rather than words to describe the likelihood of an event. This lead us to think about the important mathematical link between a number and a word and how even though words are easier to understand they are less precise than giving a numeric value.
The children enjoyed the lesson and the carousel style of activities. After another quick tweet to my network we were able to enjoy some #snowpics to show it really was 100% certain some people were going to get snow!
Lesson Outcomes
The range of activities and the chance to explore the nuances of probability language gave the children a great opportunity to:
- consolidate what they had learned about basic probability language
- experience the full range and variety of terminology used
- begin to understand the link between a lexical and numeric representation of probability
Since my lesson on Tuesday I have already seen two other examples of teachers looking for responses from their Twitter network for specific lessons. Even 2 years on from when I first did this lesson I still think that the opportunity to use your Twitter network to provide insight, responses, input, challenge and data is overlooked by many. What makes it so manageable for us to contribute is that only 140 characters is needed.
A big thankyou to everyone who helped by making a contribution it is really appreciated. Hopefully this post shows you how your 140 characters fit into the bigger picture.
Why not have a look at what you are teaching in the next few weeks and consider making a request for your network to make a contribution. I hope this lesson has given you some ideas and real methods for how this can work and making the most of it in the classroom.
Are We The Resource I Have Been Looking For?
82 years ago
After some feedback and comments from Ben Barton and Sarah Brownsword on my previous post, I have begun to see another side to the third idea I outlined. The web application I proposed would provide teachers the opportunity to find resources, connections and ideas all in one place – from one search query.
Vortex by phill.d
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
However it occurred to me that although there are existing tools that perhaps do these things, they are just diluting the process. Another web application doing this will just multiply this further, resources and people will be in another place to join and search – spreading the network even more thinly.
Maybe I was coming at this from the wrong angle. The emphasis should be on teachers developing network capabilities that allow them to tap into and find all of this and not a tool or system that does it all for you.
I consider the journey to where my network is now to be just as important as anything I gain from it. The experience of virtually meeting and connecting with literally thousands of educators from around the world has been amazing – shortcutting to a prefabricated, ready-made, network denies people that opportunity.
Someone mentioned that this type of web tool (content management and social networking combined) is a sort of “holy grail” – but on reflection I think that the real treasure is a network that invariably yields value for the user in construction as well as in use.
I am just jealous of all of those trainee teachers who are establishing their networks whilst they are training. They are tapping into the insights from working teachers and no doubt benefitting from it in their own practice. Just imagine what their network capabilities will be like when they are 3 years or 5 years into teaching.
Every teacher training course in the world should encourage and teach students to build a network to support them professionally.
I am convinced. It is not a case of finding a single tool, system or platform that seeks out content and connects teachers – it should be down to us to make the journey to those different destinations ourselves and learn as much as we can along the way.
SSAT Primary National Conference – Connected Classrooms
02 years ago
Today I attended the 4th Specialist Schools and Academies Trust Primary National Conference. I was invited to run some seminars for the delegates. Situated in one of the conference suites of the Emirates stadium, the home of Arsenal football club, the event accommodation was spacious and well equipped.
I ran my hour long session twice during the day, it was titled ”Connected Classrooms“. I based my practical ideas on 4 different connections.
- Student – Student (same class)
- Students – Students (different classes, countries, cultures)
- Teacher – Student – Learning (connecting with our curriculum)
- Teacher – Teacher (using Twitter for CPD)
I tried to keep my presentation simple and coherent, with a clear message about the ways we can use technology to engage learners.
We used the Nintendo Wii and I spent some time playing Endless Ocean and talking about the ways we have used it in our recent topic. I highlighted classroom blogging as a simple means to establish meaningful connections with other classes around the world.
Drawing upon my experiences of Twitter I spoke about why it is the most important CPD I have had. The most important connection we need to facilitate is between students in our own classes. I went into detail about how Voicethread can do this, the ways we have used it in a recent sequence of writing work and why it is one of my classroom cornerstones.
I think technology has the potential to both perpetuate traditional notions of classwork and to in fact smudge the definitions of what independent work means.
If you were one of those attending the sessions, thankyou for joining me and please feel free to leave me a comment about your reactions. I really value your feedback.
Looking Back
92 years ago
by tombarrett
in Blogging, Featured, Games Based Learning, Google, Google Earth, Teachmeet, Twitter, Wii, WISE
The sun will soon be rising on 2010 and I just wanted to look back at a hugely eventful year for me personally. Here are some of the things that have been memorable.
Last Christmas we spent our holidays in Australia. It was an amazing trip for me and I would dearly love to return to that part of the world, perhaps on a more permanent basis. When we arrived in Sydney our apartment was not going to be open until later in the day. We had landed about 8am and the prospects of entertaining a 2 year old with all of our luggage still in tow was going to be tricky. But to our rescue came Judy O’Connell and Dean Groom, both of whom I had known from our various online networks but had never met before. Judy kindly picked us up from the airport and we went back to her house where we were able to unwind for a little bit. Dean picked us up later and took us on to our apartment in Manly. I am so grateful for that amazing gesture of kindness – it got our trip off to a great start and illustrates the trust that can be developed through online connections.
The TeachMeet community has had an incredible 2009 and I have been fortunate enough to have been to five events in person. The BETT show TeachMeet began the year and I was just amazed by the scale of things and the huge interest from the commercial sector. In May Stuart Sutherland and I organised and ran the first TeachMeet in the Midlands, hosted by the National College for School Leadership. It was incredible to be part of the full organisation and we are hoping to hold another in 2010. I was delighted to be invited to do a mini-note at TeachMeet North East London and also to organise TeachMeet Channel 4 to bookend their education conference. In September I was able to return to the Scottish Learning Festival and another TeachMeet held in the BBC Scotland building. Along with popping into various Flashmeetings I also attended Dai Barnes and Doug Belshaw’s hugely successful EdTechRoundup TeachMeet which was held online. This added another amazing dimension to this incredible professional development event. With Stuart Ridout, I am currently organising TeachMeet Bett 2010 as well as TeachMeet Takeover – it looks like it should kick off another inspiring year of grass roots professional development.
When you get an invitation from royalty to a conference in another country you can be excused for being a little sceptical. But the inaugural World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Qatar was no joke. I was delighted to be included in only 1000 of the invited delegates from all over the world. A handful of edubloggers were invited but not many actually attended. It was a privilege to represent primary school teachers from the UK and be part of the wider discussions. Although the word “innovation” was in the conference name, little was done to “walk the walk” in terms of the communication processes used. That said, I blogged and tweeted my way through the event to encourage remarks and comment from a wider audience. I hope that if there is a 2010 event that more will be done to encourage delegates to share what they experience with a world audience.
This time next year I will have spent a term in a new job! After a bit of grumbling I stumbled upon a Deputy Head Teacher job that I believed would be a great opportunity. I spent the return flight from Qatar writing the letter, which got me an interview. The day and a half interview was a great challenge and I was thrilled to be offered the job. I will be starting as Deputy Head Teacher in the Summer term. I have been in my current post for about 8 years and I have been through some great times, but it has long been time for me to move on and face a new challenge. As part of the interview I asked readers of this blog and followers on Twitter to help with some testimonials. I printed them off and found a moment in the formal interview to hand them out to the panel – it was an amazing set of references and I have no doubt helped secure the job. Thankyou to everyone who contributed to the 20,000 character job reference.
During 2009 I continued my involvement with multi-touch technology in the classroom. At BETT in January I met with representatives from SMART and organised an early trial of the SMART Table in my classroom. After working with it I felt it’s capacity to impact on learning was limited. Sadly the trial was abruptly ended, in my opinion due to an honest and frank account of my experiences I blogged about. Although critical of the SMART Table I was committed to helping SMART improve and develop it as it would directly benefit the wider multi-touch educational technology field. But, alas, they prevented that by taking it away and they did it, in my opinion, to limit the damage caused by my negative posts. I am now a member of the SynergyNet steering group at Durham University who are developing a multi-touch learning project, and met in November of this year for the first time. The developments at Durham are really exciting: multi-touch classrooms, networked tables able to pass media between them and a general focus on the pedagogies that underpin multi-touch enhanced learning.
This academic year we have been doing shorter half-termly topics in Year 5. We have found that although shorter, they are more focused. The first one was Sealife. Built around and inspired by the Nintendo Wii game Endless Ocean. It was a pleasure to work with the children during the 7 weeks as we explored, discovered and learned together. Using an open ended game to drive a topic was amazing to work with and the children were completely engaged and enjoyed every moment.
Maths Maps has been a long time in the making. Years ago I made some Google Earth resources that used the satellite imagery to structure maths activities. With the development of Google Maps and the ability to now collaborate on a map as if it is a document, such as a Google Document, I have been able to realise what I had always imagined with these resources. Each Maths Map is a maths topic with activities located on real life objects visible in the satellite imagery layer of Google Maps. In total the 3 current maps have been viewed 85,000 times, but more importantly the idea has inspired other teachers to begin using Google Maps to produce engaging content for their learners.
This year I finally made the switch to a self hosted blog. With the nudging of Doug Belshaw I bought some space and installed WordPress, transferred everything from my old blog and have been really happy here in my new home. The most obvious advantage is the personalisation that you can achieve with your own space. There is no limit or other person choosing what you can add or not. You are free to be as creative with your space as you are with what you write. I was pleased to have been nominated by my peers for 6 different Edublog Awards categories this year, thankyou to all those who wrote such kind words in their nomination posts.
I just tweeted about a couple of updates to two different “Interesting Ways” presentations. The IWB resource was started in November 2007 and now there are about 30 different crowd-sourced resources with a huge amount of shared expertise. I prefer not to be too tool-centric, nor do I like the formulaic “100 Awesome things to do with a Cabbage” sort of posts that have littered education blogging recently. In my opinion what sets the Interesting Ways resources apart is that (a) they all begin at zero, they are put out there not as a perfectly formed multiple of 10 lists and (b) they are built by everyone, the crowd, educators explaining and sharing their experiences. They are authored by the community and I feel lucky to be in the position to keep encouraging them along.
A memorable year in lots of different ways and Christmas at home this year has been made really special as my 3 year old son’s excitement has built to a feverish crescendo. I have been able to share in some of that too. I wonder what 2010 will bring? I am looking forward to it already. I wish you all the best for 2010 and hope you continue to join me.
The 20000 Character Job Reference
152 years ago
Last week I had an interview for a Deputy Head Teacher post. I was successful (wooo!) and will be starting my new job in the Summer term.
I just wanted to extend my thanks and appreciation to SO many of you who gave some time to offer an endorsement via Twitter replies and blog comments after I requested some help.
One of the interview questions was about something successful I had instigated which I was proud of. I talked about this blog and then handed out printed copies of the collated Tweets and blog comments that you left for me to the panel. The response was suitably neutral for an interview. But I know it helped to back up what I said about bringing my network with me to the post.
the interview by Stitch
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
The interview process was a great challenge – lesson, formal interview, school council interview, data analysis task and presentation – reading through your amazing comments gave me a great boost in confidence.
Once again thankyou so much if you contributed your 140 characters or more to #tomsinterview, you helped me turn it into #tomsjob and I will always be grateful for that.
#tomsassembly
82 years ago
by tombarrett
in Twitter
Today I took my second full Key Stage 2 assembly of the week. Yesterday I spoke to the 240 junior children about my trip to Qatar, it was great to have an opportunity to talk with them as some of the topics of WISE were itching away in my mind.
In Monday’s assembly I showed some of the national flags of people I had met, and we talked about the meaning of some of the designs. Today we connected even further with people in my Twitter network. Before the assembly I asked:
I set the question before I left for school at around 7.30am and was delighted at the massive reaction from so many of you. With all of the responses I wasn’t going to be able to include all of them in the 15 minutes, so we talked about the weather in various parts of the world and then I set some challenges. (Thinking about it, World Cuisine would be a great curriculum topic to do – connecting to other classrooms, trying food, learning about different countries, Cooking Mama…)
I asked each class to find out more about a range of different foods that were tweeted my way.
- Y3 – Musselburgh Steak Pie (Scotland)
- Y3 – Maple Syrup (Canada)
- Y4 – Nasi Lemak (Malaysia)
- Y4 – Cockles and Jellied Eels (Essex, England)
- Y5 – Melton Mowbray Pie (Nottinghamshire, England)
- Y5 – Haggis, Neaps and Tatties (Scotland)
- Y6 – Dim Sum (Hong Kong)
- Y6 – Henderson’s Relish (Yorkshire, England)
A BIG thankyou to all of those who took a minute to send me a reply, the responses about food created a Twitter Smörgåsbord and it was so much fun seeing all of the different foods mentioned. I am looking forward to seeing what the kids find out when they report back.
The title of this blog post is the hashtag I used for the responses, it allowed me to quickly get to just the replies I needed and in fact some people just tweeted without sending it to me, I was still able to pick them up with the hashtag. Great tip to keep track of conversations etc.
I have archived the hashtag using Twapper Keeper but it is not appearing yet, you can also access all of the responses in this Google Doc. I have deleted the retweets so you are just left with the information on location, weather and food. I thought it may be a useful little source of information for others too.
In the past when I have used Twitter for a classroom activity or assembly other people have found it useful when I write about where their 140 character contributions fitted into the bigger picture. The combined effort of small contributions can have a big impact.
Once again a big thanks for helping with my assembly today if you did, the children were excited and keen to learn more about the different foods and there was even a round of applause at the end.
After we had finished I spent another 5 minutes talking to at least 10 children who wanted to tell me about their personal links with different parts of the world. I think the assembly got them thinking beyond our cultural boundaries and that’s what I was aiming for.
Using Instant Messaging in Education – Good or Bad?
62 years ago
Every single upper junior class that I have taught has loved instant messaging (IM). It is probably the most popular use of technology at home. But does that mean it needs to be used in the classroom? It falls into the same category as console gaming does and seems to spark differing reactions from people in education. I believe it can engage learners and much more.
I began the hashtag #IMinEDU to keep a record of a discussion on this topic that took place on Twitter. It revealed a range of views, some great resources and ideas. I have archived the conversation in a Google Doc because over time a hashtag Twitter search will disappear.
I have had a few experiences of the impact that IM can have on a lesson. When we began using Google Docs in our lessons we used the instant messaging function in Spreadsheets. I was able to post questions about the data we collected together – the children responded in the chat window. We repeated this recently and once again it was a great plenary to the lesson.
A further example is the use of the chat feature in a Google Presentation (In presentation/slideshow mode – “View Together”). I created a reading text and asked comprehension questions in the chat window – the children accessed the text for the answers and posted them in the chat. We have also done some peer review on a range of presentations using the chat – children posted comments and responses to work shared by others.
In my experience of using instant messaging I have discovered some common elements:
Engage, Engage, Engage – sometimes the children seem set to explode when they realise they are using IM in class. They are totally engaged with the tasks. They love using it.
Motivated - when asking a question in IM the children are really motivated to answer it, they all want to get their responses posted. They want to write – that can only be a good thing.
Inclusive - everyone can contribute at the same time. No-one misses out, everyone is involved. Responding in this way breaks the “hands-up” culture.
Behaviour - I don’t see any point in asking the children to behave completely differently when using IM in class. We can still say things like, “No smileys in the next answer,” or “I am watching your spelling for this one.” I think this flexible approach is better than saying, “You are never allowed to use smileys when we use IM in class!” That’s like asking them not to lick their lips when eating a sugar doughnut – it’s just what you do.
Teacher directed – in the examples I explained above I have been specific about the way we are using IM. It is not a free for all, it is carefully planned and directed. It is useful to have your questions typed up so you can paste them in the chat quickly.
There needs to be more examples of teachers using it and sharing their reflections, to get a fuller picture of its usefulness. I think it has a place and I hope that some ideas in this post or the Twitter discussion give you something to think about and perhaps try in your class.
How have you used instant messaging in the classroom? What is your opinion about the use of it in lessons, does it have a place?
