Another week, and another task that I am overly familiar with. Thank you COETAIL, the timing is proving to be most convenient for me. I have used Kagan’s cooperative learning structures for a few years now. I am aware that cooperation and collaboration aren’t entirely the same, but they do have a few things in common, like working together to achieve a common goal for starters. I am also in the process of reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Franklin Covey; and the first chapter is on interdependence, which lends itself immensely to collaboration.

High Standards

I have selected the ISTE standard of “4.d. Demonstrate cultural competency when communicating with students, parents, and colleagues and interact with them as co-collaborators in student learning.” for the focus of the student learning experiences. I used a variety of cooperative learning structures and technology to achieve this.

Find Someone Who

Now, to get to the actual experiences that I employed for the learning structures. To begin the lesson I went with a little structure called Find Someone Who. This is how it rolled:

1. First I modeled the structure with my co-teacher.
2. Next, I gave my students a sheet of paper that had questions relating to skills and techniques used in iMovie.
   • They will need these skills to complete the summative task later on. 
3. They each have to find a different person in the class who knows an answer to each one of the questions*. 
4. As they progress through the structure, they are learning new things. Namely, answers to the questions, and who is confident with the different skills.
5. It all finishes with a reflection together as a large group.

*Time limit was set to 8 minutes. The structure was completed to some delightful mall music, to add to the ambiance of the experience…

I love this structure as it serves as an ice breaker, builds rapport, and gets the students up and moving around the classroom; see the Collaborative Learning article. And all of this leads to deeper learning!

Groups

In the next part of the lesson, I split the students into predetermined groups based on the following criteria. Please note that a good chunk of this was lifted from Cultural Competence for Educators, particularly: Valuing diversity and dynamics of difference. In fact, reading this was a great refresher for this international educator.

1. The 18 students were split into 5 groups. 
2. Three groups of 4 with an even gender split / One group of 3, 2 boys and 1 girl / One group of three boys
3. The groups were further diversified according to their home country (Malaysia, Sweden, USA, Japan, China, France, Finland) and then by English Phase. I.e. no two English Phase 1 students in the same group. 
4. New students, i.e. students who just started at our school, were not placed in the same group, so as to promote making bonds with existing students.
5. Also, each group contained students who had expressed confidence in iMovie, based on the Find Someone Who exercise; no more than 2 per group in the groups of 4, and 1 in the group of 3.
6. Each group member was then given a role, in order to promote equal participation.

• Roles
  • Gate-Keeper: make sure everyone participates equally.
  • Time Keeper: keeping people on time.
  • Praiser: use praise to acknowledge responses.
  • Reflector: paraphrases each group member’s responses (not phase 1 student).

I instructed the Gate Keeper, to join a Nearpod lesson that I had created. The Nearpod lesson contained 3 questions and a link to an exemplary video*; similar to what they would be creating. We then watched the video together as a class (twice), before moving on to the critique stage. *Students could watch the video later in the lesson, as and when needed.

Talking Chips

Students worked collaboratively for the critique stage. I adapted a structure known as talking chips to facilitate this. Each student was given one chip. After we watched the video together, I gave the students some time to first discuss and then jot down all their ideas (the timekeeper and praiser stepped up). During this time, I encouraged them to use their active listening skills (led by the reflector) so that they fully understood what each person had to say; and helps to build mutual respect and rapport.

Then, each student answered one of the following questions. Groups of 3 students had to answer all 3. Groups of 4 students, had to answer all 3, plus any other question twice (monitored by the reflector and gatekeeper). These questions were:

1. Which iMovie technique did you notice being used?
2. What did you like about the movie, and why (Warm)?
3. What could you improve and why (Cool)?

The responses were all entered into Nearpod by each student individually, given that they shared one computer; this was deliberate to encourage group work. It was just fantastic because it removed the embarrassment factor of having to answer in front of the class. Afterward, the students viewed all the responses from every one of their peers in the class. My intention is that they keep this information and use it later on when creating their own movies on borders. In addition to the technology, the talking chips also helped serve as a visual reminder of students who had participated.

Co-Learning

The key question of “how did you co-learn with the students?” was particularly interesting regarding the active listening section of the talking chips phase. Each group had a copy of mind tools’ active listening graphic, which served as a reminder of how to listen. I sat down with each group, assuming the role of another active listener, and helped coach the students who were not familiar with the process. They found step 3 the most challenging, as they still building up a repository of feedback vocabulary; I find that adults struggle with step 4 of this process.

The whole point of having a strong visual hierarchy is to first attract the reader visiting your website, then lock them in your tractor beam and draw them into your website/world/magazine, etc. And, if it’s online you must do this within 10 seconds – otherwise, you’ve lost them.

Before I go to town on deciding what to change, cut, or cull from the rather weak visual hierarchy on my COETAIL blog I will consider my audience first; fellow COETAIL bloggers for now. After all, if my audience doesn’t want to read my website then I am doomed to failure. Furthermore, I will also design it with the mind that the visitor will be reading my blog on a desktop/laptop. Why? I posed the question: If you are reading a blog, what device do you use?

• Table
• Smartphone
• Laptop/Desktop

I need to know this the viewing device alters the website layout somewhat. And, as I mentioned above, almost all said either laptop or desktop.

What Changes Will I Make?

In short, I would like to make the following changes to my website:

• Z Pattern – Home Page
  1. Add more navigation buttons, one for each course
  2. Add Social media icons
  3. Delete the main banner showing the latest posts
  4. Add the three latest posts, and arrange them in circles with text below each one
• F pattern – Posts
  1. Use active language
  2. Adhere to the non-linear reading style
  3. Check for a readability score
  4. Be succinct

Home Page Changes – Z Pattern

First off, I do not see a need to change the location, font properties, or color of the title text. It is in the top left-hand corner, which should be read first according to the Z pattern. The font is a sans serif style, which is neither too masculine nor feminine. It is also large enough to be read clearly, contrasting well against the white background. The color is green, with hints of yellow. I chose green because, according to color psychology, it signifies growth and suggests stability and endurance. Naturally, my blog posts show these traits…Moreover, I chose green because I’m Irish 😉

• Home Button: I would ditch my home button as the COETAIL 11 will serve as the home button.
• Social Media Icons: I would add four more social media icons, on the top right beside the website search icon. To push visitors to like and subscribe to my Twitter, Facebook, Email, and YouTube channels, which in turn would help drive more traffic back to the blog. This also means there are 5 icons in the top right-hand corner of the page – staying with the rules of odds. Moreover, there is nothing in between the blog title and the social media icons, adhering to the rule of thirds.
• Course Buttons: I would like to add five-course buttons (rule of thirds) to make my website easier to navigate to posts under each course. These buttons will have the same color as the main title, with a darker background. The size, font style, the spacing would remain the same (repetition) to maintain a sense of order. However, I would add a thin green border around the current course, so that the user’s attention is brought to it. I would also like to ever so slightly dim the other course buttons to reinforce this (color and contrast).
• Main Banner: Next up I would drop the main banner more quickly than a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson. Sticking with the Z pattern I want to replace the banner with three images of my three latest posts. I will weave a little bit of semiotic dark magic here as well – see the image below for what I would like to improve.

Blog Changes – F Pattern

The F pattern, at least for me, is more challenging to adopt – not least because every time I add a post, I will need to follow its recommendations of it. And here they are:

• Titles: I plan to make my titles more succinct. Before they were a little bit out there, and although I found them funny, I am not sure my readers did. Furthermore, they are not succinct in explaining what the paragraph may be about. 
• Bullet Points: I will increase my use of bullet points, as online readers adopt a non-linear reading style. They want to get the information quickly and easily.  
• Active Voice: Next up, I need to improve my use of active voice. This will take time, as I revert to passive voice a lot. Yoast is a delightful little plugin, that can help with this.
• Who & What: Finally I will get my main information across succinctly. Getting into the who and what in the first paragraph. Second Paragraph: I will put a little less effort into the second paragraph, as the F pattern suggests that users skim over this.

What Did I Implement?

I went for part of the Z pattern change on the home page. I made this change, as it was long overdue and I think the home page is the most important part of my website. It is likely that it will be the first page of my website that users will visit. I hope that given the changes, visitors will find it easier to navigate my website and to visit my social media accounts. I did want to make more changes to the menu, which are more in line with my initial design, but I could not change the CSS in the template I have. So currently there is way too much white space after Course 5.

Essentially Symbaloo lets you organize all of your favorite websites/links, onto a webpage. Before Symbaloo came along, my life was as disorganized as Boris and Brexit. Now, thanks to Symbaloo, all my links are saved in one place and you can access these from any device.

Personalize

After signing up, you can create pages (webmixes) that you use to organize links; these are arranged into tiles. You can personalize both the web mixes and tiles. You can add backgrounds, icons, text, color, and so on; which certainly helps with the organization theme.

There are also learning paths, which I have yet to experiment with. My understanding is that you can create a series of links, organized into a learning pathway for your students.

Using it at School

Symbaloo is a cracking wee tool that you could use with your students every day. My intention for the coming school year is to create web mixes (these are sharable) for different grade levels.

The web mixes will be made up of tiles for all the websites that they need for day-to-day learning, such as ManageBac, Office 365, Newsela, LibGuides, and so on. I believe, that integrating this type of technology will most certainly help your students organize their online resources. Furthermore, once they become used to creating their own web mixes, perhaps they could contribute by sharing them in the school and beyond.

Room for Improvement?

The website works seamlessly on my MacBook Pro, across all browsers, and on smartphones and tablets alike. There is an app available, both on Google Play and the App Store, but it feels quite clunky to me, and as such I prefer not to use it.

A colleague asked me what was the easiest way to find free-to-use images, which her students could use for a space exploration presentation without requesting permission to use said images. Of course, the easiest and quickest solution is to use Google. Type in your keywords, select images, tools, and usage rights, and select labeled for reuse (with or without modification). Download, or copy the image, get the owner’s name and URL – the job is done.

Opportunities

But hold up! I saw an opportunity to teach her students about how to use two other image websites, which are attribution free (although we got them to add citations), and of course free to use and download. These are Unsplash and Pixabay.

Searching for images on these two websites is not a difficult thing to teach, nor should it be. As anticipated, we found that it took 2-3 minutes longer to search and find an image that met the needs of the project than on Google.

Persevere

Initially, the students found it frustrating because, unlike Google, the images they wanted to do not magically appear on the first page of results; but they persevered regardless. They persevered by; scrolling through more pages of results, changing their search criteria, clicking on the tags for each picture, checking other works by the same author, and exploring related images. This perseverance paid off through a deeper level of understanding of space exploration and indeed Pixabay and Unsplash.

Learning in Action

It was just fantastic to see this real learning happening – from what could have been a very simple and meaningless task – no offense Google. By real learning I mean they spent time thinking about the impact that keywords have on results. They even discovered what tags were! As we got them to download images, they also learned the importance of changing the file names, and in Pixabay, they learned about file sizes and types; they provide different download options.

But the best part of this was the students began to understand that there are creators of these images Furthermore, they started to realize that they could be the next generation of digital creators and empowered contributors.

Thank you Unsplash and Pixabay, for your free-to-use images.

Storyboard That is a free website where you can create your own storyboards to help visualize a scene or event. You get to choose from a fun selection of scenes and characters. It could be useful for demonstrating an understanding of a given topic such as deforestation (tried it), or it could simply be used to storyboard a scene from a historical event.

To use it students must sign up for a free account, using either their school or personal email address. It is worth pointing out that free accounts are limited to two storyboards per week in either a 3×1 or 3×3 format. All the objects which you can add to the storyboard are customizable. For example, you can add Instagram poses to characters or even change the weather in the various background scenes available. Which just makes it so much more enjoyable, and a good hook for your learners.

It is so easy to use, fun, and a refreshing alternative to just creating another presentation to demonstrate learning. 

Check out the video guide here