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Cache and Carry – My Week In International Education – Entry 2
Ed-Tech I’m Testing
Recently, I’ve dived back into Google Sheets and got my Grade 5 students to cover all the basics required for making a line graph. I dubbed this the “7 Steps to Success in a Graph” and made sure to emphasize the importance of:
- Clear and concise title
- Axis labels that indicate the units of measurement and variable being plotted
- Consistent and appropriate scale for each axis
- Data points to make the line easier to follow
- Visible yet not-so-thick line
- A legend that explains any symbols or colours used
- Citation or source for the data being presented.
Teaching Practice I’m Trying
A Kagan learning structure called Rally Coach, where students work in pairs to solve a problem. The first step is to give them a few problems, then one of the students tries to solve it whilst the other coaches, and vice versa. This is a pretty awesome structure, as it provides a platform for shared responsibility. However, the one issue I have is the coaching part. My students do not know what coaching is, and nor should they, as it is quite a complex process; having been through it myself. So I have resolved to name it Rally Assistance, whilst I work on some sentence stems/prompts to get the students going.
YouTube Video I’m Watching
The Obscurious YouTube channel contains a bunch of practical information on Chat GPT and other AI platforms. This video, in particular, produced a bunch of threads that I started to pull already…
Things I’ve Learned
I recently attended the Cambodia International Educators Conference and loved meeting so many awesome people with different ideas and approaches to education. I presented on entrepreneurship through mostly stories, but in hindsight, I would have planned more hands-on activities for the participants.
The String I’m Pulling
I’m delving into chatbot prompts as a way to prepare for the upcoming AI (or Large Language Model/LLM?) tsunami. I found a great cheat sheet to get started, but I’m also using a ChatGPT prompt generator to generate prompts for me.
Quote I’m Pondering
“Live simply, so that others can simply live.” And what’s more simple than having a chatbot do the work for you?
Falling Upward – Richard Rohr
There are two parts to life. The start of the second part of our lives may begin without us even knowing, but that suffering is involved in ” a deep invitation to something more.”
The second part of our journey begins with a sacrifice. For me that was breaking up with my ex-fiance, leaving my job and country that I had taught in for 11 years.
It’s about not staying on the path we were on before. It’s finding the right path.
We learn so much more spiritually by doing it wrong than by doing it right.
Like skaters, to move forward you must also move side to side.
Life is not about constant growth.
The first part of life is:
- “What makes me significant”
- “How can I support myself” and
- “Who will go with me” the serving part is to find the contents. Cast your net into the deep.
The first 3 concerns of the first half of life are identity; security; sexuality/gender. Too much focus is spent on this for all of some people’s lives. As the author calls it, structuring of the ego. It’s narcissism. Once you reach the end you will have the ‘ who am I?’ question
Change must be programmed into your spirituality. Otherwise, you will end up worshiping the status quo, and your ever-fragile ego. If you don’t change, then you should embrace extinction.
To begin the hero’s journey, the first step is to leave your home!
The first half of life
You need to fall and learn from these failings. But there should be limits for you to follow, not chaos. When you discharge the ‘soldier’ it will feel like a loss of self
Stumbling Stone
You will lose and must lose something. The first for me was a breakup of a long relationship, and the second, was China and the Shanghai lockdown – alongside not seeing my partner for 2.5 years because of the strict entry requirements to China. This helps us let go of our egocentric obsessions. This cannot be planned for, it just is.
You must stumble and fall, and remember you cannot move into the second half of life until you went through the first half.
Necessary Suffering and Second Half
If you want to save your life, you must first lose it. You must go through the pain.
“Truth sets you free, and it tends to make you miserable”. The false self is the role, title, and self-image. Creation of own mind. By shedding the false self, you will discover your true self. The true self is who you were in the beginning in the eyes of God.
A person who has found themselves lives life in the big picture – as part of history.
In the second half, you look for things that we all have in common. The first half is looking for something that makes us different
“Live simply so that others can live!” Elizabeth Seton
Don’t trap yourself in a persona, as you won’t be able to live up to it all of the time. A persona is what most people want from you and reward you for and what you choose to identify yourself with. Make friends with the people who challenge your persona, otherwise, you can’t move from the first half. The shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself and what you don’t want others to see. The shadow must have light shed on it, so it can expose the hidden things. You have to shadow box to come to your fullness of life
Your circle of real friends will grow smaller in the second half. In the second half, allow others to do what they must do; first half others.
Introversion follows us in the second half of life, alongside a need for less stimulation. In the second half, you become the real person you were meant to be eg. Doer becomes a thinker, a visionary becomes practical
Mirroring
Is about how people react to you. And that comments to you are not about you, but about the person saying them.
The author says that the more you fall, the easier it is to bounce.
Cache and Carry – My Week In International Education – Episode 1
Following in the footsteps of two people I think are outstanding, James Clear and Tim Ferris, I will be doing a weekly reflection on my week in education. It will include:
- Ed-Tech I’m testing
- Teaching practice I’m trying
- YouTube video I’m watching
- A quote I am applying /pondering
- Things I’ve learned
- The String I’m pulling
Ed-Tech I’m Testing
After hearing about poe.com from J Cal on the All In the podcast, I just had to download it – and boy, it is a total blast. Although only available as an App on iOS, you access it through a web browser as well. You can ask questions/converse with four different AI chatbots, including ChatGPT. I love the convenience of being able to compare what answers you get from 4 chatbots, rather than relying on just one.
Teaching Practice I’m Trying
This week it is TAG feedback. It stands for:
- Tell me something you like
- Ask me a question
- Give me a positive suggestion to improve my work
We had experimented with warm and cool feedback for a while, and whilst it worked, it lacked a catchy acronym – critical in education. There are a bunch of sentence stems/starters out there to get the ball rolling with your students – check out the one below made on Poe!
YouTube Video I’m Watching
I can’t get enough of Andrew Huberman. In one of his latest videos, he talks to Tim Ferris about what he considers to be the 5 pillars of health and performance, these are sleep, nutrients, movement, light, and social connection/relationships (including relationships to self. The man is a genius.
Quote, I’m Pondering
Taken from last week’s post the two things that I was pondering and struggling with from time to time are “not wasting time on nonsense” and “living a simple life”.
Things I’ve Learned
That we need to let go of the status quo and embrace change.
The String I’m Pulling
AI has given me the amazing output for very little thought on the input side. I’m having to think less and less when it comes to some of the different knowledge work that I do. What are the long-term impacts of this? Read The Machine Stops, by E.M.Forster for a glance into the future.
Virtual Learning Survival Guide
Today is February 16th, 2020, and instead of looking out at the Shanghai skyline (not much to see from my third-floor apartment), I am looking out at that sun setting over Patong beach in southern Thailand. I am here as it felt like a safer place to be, given the uncertainty in China, during the COVID-19 outbreak.
I am very grateful to be blogging from this spot, the weather is beautiful, and the cool sea breeze greets me every morning with its refreshing embrace. Having said that, I find myself yearning to be back at school in Shanghai, preparing for my tech integration sessions, media lessons, ISTE conference, and the FLL robotics competition. I miss seeing the students every day and have empathy for them and my colleagues during these uncertain times. And, as it stands we find ourselves in the midst of a virtual learning revolution – and that my friends are where I draw strength from. Let’s find out what I have included in the virtual learning survival guide.
Hunger Games
Although I felt fully prepared for virtual learning, I did feel that maybe some of my colleagues and students and their families felt like a character in Hunger Games during the countdown to grab their weapons and open up the supply boxes – not knowing who would survive and what would lie within! Our faculty and students are not expecting to find weapons, but instead apps, training, and tutorials inside the boxes. Moreover, they are not fighting for their lives, but instead, they are fighting to learn virtually and keep our community going strong – once a dragon always a dragon!
What’s Inside the Box?
When I first learned that our school was preparing for virtual learning I was tremendously excited about what we could achieve with technology. Furthermore, it struck me that every teacher was without question being up-skilled in a way that I could never have imagined. They were about to address, with or without knowing, every single ISTE Educator standard (particularly learner) over the coming hours, days, and weeks.
That being said, we wanted to limit what tools (apps) we would put inside the survival kit for all involved. My reasoning for this is that although teachers certainly have the content and pedagogical knowledge (not to mention passion to teach), they may not have all the technical knowledge; according to TPACK So, armed with this information, I put the following apps inside the survival box.
ManageBac
We have been using this at our school for a few years now, mostly to deliver resources, assign summative and formative dates, and communicate through the internal (asynchronous) messaging service. The students and their parents are competent users of it, given its ubiquitous use in school, and several coffee mornings that we have put on to get everyone confident and competent.
However, we hit an (unanticipated) snag quite early on. I dare say that many of you are aware of the Great Firewall here in China. Now here’s the thing, ManageBac had moved their servers from outside of China into China, in order to improve performance. It sounds like a great idea, right? Well yes and no – the problem is that a LOT of our students and faculty currently aren’t in China, so they started to experience a range of issues; most importantly uploading files-projects, etc! Now as you can imagine this caused a bit of a problem. Enter Microsoft Teams…
Teams
Our technology department has been using Teams for over a year now, and we love all the accessories that come with it! From instant messaging to integrated OneNote notebooks and from GIFs to hosting live events for up to 10000 people!
This is the only app, from the survival box, that I have not introduced to faculty, although all the students I teach use it; this decision was made earlier this year as we did not want to overburden staff with yet another new app – but the time is nigh! And, given that this will be a new app for almost all of our community I set about creating a few video tutorials to help everyone on their way. I have also started my first ever online live lessons with my students and co-teacher – and I simply loved it! I loved being able to talk to my students again, and it was a great opportunity to re-establish connections.
I also created a team (group) in teams for all the faculty I work with so that they can reach out to me if needed for troubleshooting, updates, and ideas for integrating tech. Something interesting happened, in that only a small percentage of people are active, quite a few lurkers (remember course 1) out there, but that was to be expected. In fact, after two weeks of using Teams with faculty and students pushed me to read more about virtual learning and I came across this paper from Northumbria University titled Communities of Practice and Virtual Learning Communities: benefits, barriers and success factors, found on Google Scholar! It discusses the concept of a virtual Community of Practice (CoP); which is essentially what I clumsily stumbled into with the creation of the survival guide. I appreciate it having a cool acronym now!
Another key point, and one that will take time, but has been expedited given the current situation, is the need for technology to be the accepted and transparent form of communication.
Microsoft Stream and Flipgrid
The final two apps are Stream, Microsoft’s answer to YouTube, and Flipgrid, my infatuation with this app grows every day.
Stream was an easy win for most faculty and students – given that it is a video-sharing platform; and one that you do not need a VPN for. A really nice feature that only faculty and staff, or whoever the creator designates, can view the content. However, by far the most well-thought feature is the ability to embed quizzes in a video, which of course adds a layer of interactivity for those watching.
Flipgrid is just a superb tool, that should be in everyone’s tech tool kits, regardless of whether or not virtual learning is taking place. Their tagline is Empower Every Voice, and that is realized in every video reply that a student or faculty uploads. I found that given the asynchronous nature of Flipgrid, students were way more likely to participate than leaving messages in ManageBac or speaking out during a live lesson in teams.
We felt we needed to reach out to our students with something more than a message or email. We wanted them to know that we were thinking about them during these uncertain times, so we had the students upload a video with these three questions:
- Where are you currently staying?
- What is on your mind at the moment?
- What are your expectations regarding virtual learning?
Their responses were mixed. Some were anxious, some were curious – but the one thing they all had in common was their drive to continue learning!
And so it is with all these tech tools, knowledge, skills, and understanding that we will push on with this unexpected virtual learning journey.
Calibrating Concentration Time
This weekend I experimented with my ideal concentration time for academic writing. I tried the Pomodoro technique but felt that it was too short at 25 minutes. Next up, I tried 90 minutes worth of concentration, after reading the stupendous book Deep Work by Cal Newport (read my notes on it here). But my brain was frazzled after concentrating for that long, although I did find myself getting into a deep flow state, as described by Martin Seligman.
Finally, after watching and getting advice from my favourite YouTuber, Huberman, I tried concentrating for 45 minutes, then taking a 5-10 minute break, as he suggests. It is important that in that 5-10 break, you don’t focus on any one thing e.g. phone, reading, etc, but rather you complete a menial or automated task (shallow task?), like walking around, doing the dishes, or a little meditation, to give your brain the break it needs. After some trial and error, I settled on 40 minutes, with a 10-minute break. Then after two 40-minute sessions, I would take a 20-minute break, I also have real white noise, generated by a fan, to top things off. Done!
This (working) week I am reflecting on Aurelius’ notes on Diognetus, i.e.
- not to waste time on nonsense
- not to be taken in by people
- not to be obsessed with trends
- to accept unwelcome truths
- live a simple life.
Let’s see how that goes…
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