Takeaways and Reflections from Learning 2 Africa

Every year, I get recharged from attending Learning 2.0 - I just want to keep going back.  There's something about the energy, connection and the learning that happens there and beyond that draws me to L2 events, whether they be in Asia or Africa.  Last year, I was very fortunate to be invited to be part of the organising committee for the first L2Africa in Addis Ababa, and also attended (and helped out) with L2Asia in Bangkok.  This year, I continued to help out with L2Africa in Johannesburg (specifically with organising the Cohorts) and will also be working with the crew to launch the first L2Europe in Milan (spring of 2016).  On the first day in Jo'burg, Jeff Utecht called me a Learning2 "junkie" which I don't mind . . . I think it's an apt description of getting my annual (or bi-annual ;-) "fix" for all things ed tech.  Learning 2.0 really make me expand my thinking and makes me hit the reset button every time . . . it gives me the time and space to find balance between my teaching and learning, between work and play, between high tech and low/no tech, and between what's happening at my school and everyone else's.

So what are my takeaways from the second L2Africa?  Here's some of my thoughts:

• Size does matter - this year's L2Africa was almost half the size as last years (or at least it really felt that way).  Part of the reason it felt so much smaller was the enormity of the AISJ campus - beautiful and spread out across a hilltop . . . it offered lots of open spaces for everyone to find their own space (but that impacted on the connections you could build during the breaks, lunches and even the Unconference times).  A secondary reason is due to the higher concentration of AISJ faculty who attended the conference.  Having a higher number of local participants "watered down" the opportunities to connect and share with other teachers from across the region, plus the local faculty often did not participate in the social gatherings and dinners for the conference.  Working and collaborating with other teachers from around the world is a big part of Learning 2.0 - future conferences really need to keep this in mind.
• Having a smaller conference impacts on the conference experience as a whole - a number of tweaks and changes were made to the conference structure and organisation as a result of the lower registration numbers.  The two areas which really stuck out for me were the reduction of Cohort meetings (from 3 down to just 2) and the organisation of the Workshops (increasing the Workshop time slots to 3, but having workshop leaders present twice in order to fill up the time slots).  With the Cohort meetings, only having two of them meant that the first meeting was occupied with getting to know everyone in the Cohort, and getting into some of the group's "burning questions".  The second/final meeting was entirely filled up with "other business" and completing the conference feedback, so it was a bust.  Most of my Cohort were experienced Learning2 folks, so we bonded pretty fast and were able to get down to connecting and sharing - but I know that other Cohorts never really bonded as they did not have the time to do so.  Also, many of the members in my Cohort lamented the missing Cohort meeting on the Friday evening as they got so much out of it last year.  My recommendations here are to keep the three Cohort meetings and lengthen the last one by 30 minutes to provide the extra time needed for completing the conference feedback, while not taking time away from the Cohorts.

• Getting back to the basics of Search - a really started thinking about this while sitting in Jeff Utecht's extended session focussing on teaching students in this age of information overload.  For the last few years, I have been delivering lessons to all G9 students (connected to an English 9 research project) on how search engines and ranking work, how to do more effective searches, and techniques for refining your search.  What became apparent to me sitting in the workshop, is that I really need to go back to the faculty and do all of this work once again with them.  "We are all technology teachers" and effective search techniques is something that we should all be teaching/using/demonstrating/continually reinforcing every year at all grade levels.  "Oh duh!", right?
• Recruiting 2.0 - sitting and talking with Maggie Hos-McGrane from ASBombay about the Global Recruitment Collaborative was enlightening and inspired.  The work that has gone into creating this collaborative and cooperative option which connects the top schools in the world is something that my school needs to tap into.  My school meets all of the qualifications to join the GRC (we offer at least one IB Program, have a 1:1 laptop program, and are looking for innovative international teachers each year) but we have not done so . . . I really need to talk to our new director about this, and Maggie has sent another invitation out already.  This can only benefit the school in the long run by attracting the type of quality and experienced faculty without any additional cost to the school.  Win for the school, and win for the faculty.

• Making a Maker Space - this is a project that has already been started here, which I am not really involved in.  But that doesn't mean that I'm not interested and can't build my knowledge about it.  From my second extended session of the conference, I got a huge insight into how a Maker Space can be built and resourced with simple tools, equipment, and donated stuff (like old children's toys and building blocks or Lego).  All of these resources can make for exciting building/design projects which are open ended yet closed in scope.  In a very short time, our group built a collaborative Rube Goldberg machine in sections, which had to integrate and connect with the other sections to form a working machine with a specific goal.  Not only was this a great collaborative learning and building experience, but it all about the bonding and working as a team (even if we had never met each other before).  All down with simple stuff in hand - no robotics, motors, or digital anything.
• Using Wikipedia - Jeff Utrecht had some great information and writing projects (for HS students) linked to using Wikipedia with students.  Wikipedia is the world's largest collection of data/information, yet many teachers refrain from using it personally and for education.  This anti-wikipedia culture has to change, beginning with educating faculty about how wikipedia is curated and rated for accuracy.  Delving into the rubrics for accuracy and relevance of information is closely tied to citations and authority of sources - aren't these precisely the topics and skills that we want to our students to know and use intimately?  Adding to and correcting Wikipedia entries and using the rubrics provided are great writing exercises which have a world-wide audience, is authentic and meaningful, can be linked to a student's CV and university applications (through their Wikipedia profile and account).  Imagine if you can show on your application that you have contributed to a number of Wikipedia entries on a variety of topics which have been accepted and approved by the world at large and the expert curators?  How powerful would that be?  Instructing my faculty about using Wikipedia in the classroom has always been something that I have done in the past, but now I have more ammunition for moving this forward across the school.

Although this year's version of L2Africa was smaller than the first edition in Addis, it still had its moments and takeaways for me.  The MS/HS Technology Leaders Cohort was great and jumped right into sharing and collaborating - I hope this group keeps in touch through Google+ in the future.  There was a lot of experience in the room, which I hope we can all leverage in the future.  There are a number of takeaways listed above which I need to get working on to implement in the HS here this year . . . so I had better get to work!  Did you attend L2Africa?  Are you planning on going to the first L2Europe in April?  What are your takeaways from Jo'burg or your "burning questions" going into Milan?

Now I'm All Googley!

It has been almost a month since I attended the GTASWE 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden and I promised to write a post about the experience.  Well, it was a blast for sure and well worth the effort of applying, making the video, getting myself to the GTA in the last week before our long winter break, and then trying to recover from being away from school for three days during the last days before Christmas.

Be prepared to put in long, full-on days at the GTA, meet lots of great, innovative and inspiring people F2F and online, work really hard with learning new tools and expanding your world, and then crash afterwards.  I was only gone for two nights, but I didn't get much sleep while I was away.  Not that jet-lag was a problem for me (like it was for some others coming from the US or Asia), as I only changed one time zone.  The work days were just long (and dark in Sweden in December), so it was late to bed and early to rise . . . breakfast was served at the Google offices early each morning and I had a 2 km walk each way from where I was staying.

The biggest take-away for me from the GTA was certainly the people that I met and worked with, and the network of GCTs that I am now hooked up with.  As an Apple Distinguished Educator, I know how valuable such a network of people can be as a resource, guide, mentor and sounding board - the growth and learning with Google started at the GTA and has been running full throttle ever since through the Google+ GCT group, which is very active and dynamic.

Becoming a Google Certified Teacher (GCT) involves creating an Action Plan for a Google related project that you endeavour to tackle over the next year.  "How are you going to change your world?" was the project question . . . I went to the GTA with no clear idea about what my project would be, but over the course of the two days, it all started to take shape in my mind.  On the first morning, I met Liz and we talked about a number of Google-related and topics over breakfast.  Without having any idea who she is or what her role at the GTA was, we got to talking about working in Poland and her connections here.  As I would be the first GCT in Poland, she wanted to talk later about how I might help her with something that she was already working on.  It turned out that Liz Sproat is the Head of Education for Google, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa region) and she is working on a huge project to bring GAfE into Polish national schools.  After discussing this more before the GTA finished, this has grown into the "big part" of my project.  The "smaller part" of what I want to do involves creating and sharing a Google Lit Trip for my father's memoir "Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A childhood in wartime China" (by Michael David Kwan).  If you are interested in the progress of either of these parts of my project, then have a look here at my Action Plan Site.

Getting All Googley!

Getting Started with GAfE

My TechXcursion into the Google world is coming full circle now, since moving to Europe 5 years ago.  At my previous school in Beijing, we never used Google Apps for Education (GAfE) as it was only sporadically available from within the Great Wall.  In the 8 years that I lived and worked in China, I got to experience the first time that Google itself was blocked and the ensuing panic amongst faculty and students that cascaded throughout the school.  As the blockade dragged on, it became an interesting case study for the entire school for how to still access Google, and for considering/comparing the other tools out there.  So, moving to Warsaw was the real beginning of my work in the world of Google.

The first port of call was coming to grips with the school's poor implementation of GAfE, as it was laying mostly dormant and unused by faculty and students.  The school staff was still primarily using a legacy email system, even though they also had Gmail accounts under a school domain.  Students, on the other hand, only had Gmail accounts which were largely going unused.  The student accounts were haphazardly created, which meant that it was impossible to tell which account belonged to which student in some cases, which accounts were no longer needed (as the students had graduated or left the school), or who "JiWon1", "JiWon3" and "JiWon7" actually are.  To further complicate the problem, the two email systems did not play nicely with each other which meant that faculty could not look up a student email account, and students would send messages to their teachers which would remain unread as the teachers rarely opened their Gmail accounts.  It took me almost a full year, but killing the old email system and rebuilding everything in GAfE for the high school was the obvious thing that had to be done.

Towards the end of my first year here, I finally got the green light to migrate the entire high school over to GAfE, which became my big project through the spring and into the summer holiday.  I built a process for guiding the faculty who wanted to get rid of their dual email accounts, that I then used to individually start the migration.  By the summer holidays, all but a couple of the HS faculty had made the journey, and the last few followed at the start of the new school year.  The other school divisions decided to follow our lead and make the transition through the fall of the new school year as well.  A major piece of the puzzle was taking down all of the existing student accounts, and then building unique accounts for everyone in the school K-12.  Student accounts are identified with their year of graduation, so they now follow them from year to year as they move up through the school.  Avenues for communication and collaboration finally were in place for everyone in the high school community.  With everyone using the same system and tools, GAfE quickly became part of the vocabulary of the community and one of the big tools that is used everyday, in every class.

Google Geo Institute

Prior to summer holidays in 2012, I saw a link to the Google Geo Institute in London in June, which was still accepting applications.  The application was relatively straight-forward, and I got support from my tech director to attend, so I put in my application and got accepted.  The Geo Institute took place in the Google offices near the west end and theatre district - fabulous location but London expensive!  And being in London right in the space between the Queen's Jubilee and the Summer Olympics was pretty cool.  There were still huge banners and images of the royal family all around town, and the Olympic venues were being built all around the city.  The pre-Olympic buzz was certainly in the air and it was exciting to just be in the city at that time.

Selfie @Google - by special permission (I had to get permission from the leaders to take this one pic)

The Geo Institute focussed on all of the geography based Google tools, and it was really great to work with some excellent trainers and guest experts with Maps, Earth, Sketchup and such.  I think the highlight for me was meeting and working with Jerome Burg, the father of Google Lit Trips.  The previous year, I worked alongside one of the English faculty and helped her work through Jerome's rather famous "Kite Runner" Lit Trip, so it was great to work with him.  I also really appreciated spending some quality time learning and playing with Sketchup and Earth in an organised way.  I got way deeper into these tools than I had ever before, especially with Sketchup where I build a rather elaborate doghouse in a very short amount of time - credit goes to the great trainers who were leading the workshops!

Google Teachers Academy - Europe 2013

When I saw the link to the application for the Google Teachers Academy (to become a Google Certified Teacher) which is being held in Europe this year, I jumped at the opportunity.  After securing permission to apply from my school, I started combing through the application to see what it entailed, and all of the different kinds of questions that it asked, to get a better handle on the process.  If you are going to apply in the future to attend a GTA, then I strongly suggest that you carefully look through the questions and draft your answers over time.  Personally, I wrote down my thoughts and answers over about ten days before filling out the application form.  I also went through a number of different ideas for the application video before settling on an "RSA Animate" style video on one of the required topics.  Originally, I enlisted the help of one of my friends (the art teacher who is an excellent sketch artist and cartoonist) to see if he could make a series of drawing for me, but there just was not enough time for him to do the work.  In the end, I built my own 1 minute video using Sparkol's Videoscribe, so I got to try out a cool new tool (a one week trial copy is free) and use it for a real project (just in time learning). My advice for the video is to really plan it out (even use a storyboard) as you only have 1 minute to work with.  Below is my application video, which was successful as I have been invited to attend the GTASWE in Stockholm in a few weeks.  I will post up another entry when I get back from Sweden!

Just a Short Jaunt to the Dojo

This is just a Short Jaunt TechXcursion into the mysterious world of the ninja.  At the Learning 2.012 conference last year in Beijing (back at my old school, the Western Academy of Beijing, so I had to make the long trip from Europe ;-) Jeff Utecht demonstrated the Google Apps Ninja Program that he developed based on the official Google Apps Certification program.  I had met Jeff before, in my previous days working at WAB, and his presentation of the Ninja program intrigued me.  He originally developed the program at the International School of Bangkok and has since released it for any school to implement for free.

As you can tell by the name of the program, Jeff has branded it and made it for student consumption.  There are online quizzes and ninja belt levels to work through, as students (and faculty) work through the different belts on their way to becoming a Ninja Master.  I have implemented and launched the program here at ASW, but I have to say that it was no small feat.  It is a huge job!  As another blogger mentions here, it has taken me numerous hours to take the Ninja materials and fashion it into a workable program at my school.  Updating and checking all of the quizzes was a big job, and I took my cues from the materials and logos to make it a little campy as well.  Do you understand, Grasshopper?  In building the program for my school, I also took the opportunity to reorganize the program into 5 Disciplines corresponding to the different quizzes that are available - Search, Communication (Gmail), Organization (Calendar), Collaboration (Docs/Drive) and Contribution (Sites).

I took a slightly different path for my implementation, as my school uses both Google Apps and Moodle as our primary learning platforms, so I built our Ninja Dojo in Moodle along with placing all of the associated materials in Google Apps.  This particular Moodle course is not currently setup for Guests, so I cannot provide you with a link into it here. So you will just have to be content with the screenshot above and the other links at the top of this post.  However, I will say that I have put myself through the entire program (which makes me Grand Master Kwan) as a test of all of the materials, belt tests and processes for grading the quizzes through Flubaroo . . . it is challenging and fun, and there is a lot to learn for staff and students alike.  I have pushed this out directly to a few faculty members who wanted to learn more about Google Apps this year, and have done a soft-launch with the HS student body . . . a few have signed up already so it's gaining some traction.  The other angle that I am playing with this is to turn it into a CAS service project for students, where the idea is to become a Google Apps Ninja Master Sensei after completing all of the belts . . . sounds cheesy, but it might just work.  I have already created a student tech help group in the HS which I have named the AppleCorps to help with in class support for our new Mac 1:1 laptop program, so why not try to build a similar student program for Google Apps?  Have a look at the Ninja Program, and if your school uses Google Apps for Education then you might want to start a dojo of your own.

Do you think becoming a Google Apps Ninja Master can change your Computing Karma?  Have you started a dojo in your school?  What have been the challenges and successes?