Outstanding ICT - 8th May 2017
Welcome to Issue 10 of Outstanding ICT. Not the issue I planned as my focus was going to be to explore Microsoft's Classroom, but Microsoft have since announced that Classroom will be replaced by Teams for Education at the end of July, so I am now wary of jumping the gun. If you want to know the full picture Tony Phillips' blog pretty well covers it. Microsoft eh! What'ya gonna do with them? I'm sure that Team will be a fantastic tool when it arrives and I'll cover it when the MS sands have stopped shifting.
Just wanted to mention that Monday is the deadline for MOS score submissions for the Four Nations Heat of the MOS World Championships, I have four students in training for this year's competition, so next edition I'll be chuffed if I can report OPA qualifying for this heat three years on the trot! Very exciting! If you want to know more about the competition you can contact Prodigy Learning here.
Back to this edition, My Best Lesson introduces an old friend; in 365 Support we look at the use of Forms to produce quizzes for your classes (ok, I'll admit it, this was going to be a Classroom article!) and in Classroom Apps just a quick reminder of the MS software deal that not all schools seem to be aware of.
My Best Lesson - What's the Point?
I invented Mr Pointy many years ago to introduce slide and transition timings in PowerPoint. I designed Mr Pointy as a stop-frame animation and to be as simple to draw as possible to give pupils as much time as possible animating him. I really didn't want them wasting time on detail. Pupils would draw the character with me then CTRL+C then CTRL+V the slide, move him a little then CTRL+C, CTRL+V again and off they went.
After using the idea a couple of times it became evident that Mr Pointy was a hit. Pupils came back to me days after to show me their Mr Pointy adventure, sometimes comprised of hundreds of slides. I then used him for Year 6 lessons during their induction visits and subsequently had pupils arrive in year 7 the following September with their Mr Pointy adventure. Mr Pointy became the default last-lesson-of-term task, often with an Xmas or Easter theme. I reckon I came close to reaching a point where every pupil in my last three or four schools had a Mr Pointy PowerPoint animated adventure somewhere in their user area.
To set-up to produce a stop-frame animation using PowerPoint you need to check loop continuously and teach pupils to use F5 to start their animation to make playback easier.
Then go to the Transitions tab and change the settings so the slides are 00:00:00 seconds long and Advance to the next slide automatically not waiting for the mouse to be clicked. Do not forget to select Apply To All!
Be prepared for fairly hefty file sizes. If pupils use a background image and copy the slide 150 times they may bump into the limits of their storage, so you might ask pupils to do a bit of housekeeping first. They tend to get very frustrated if they manage to freeze their PCs in the middle of a save!
The video below is one of my Xmas examples and I have pasted a shot of the slide sorter for the same animation so you get an idea of slides vs duration etc.
I found it strange though that Mr Pointy always seemed to come to a sticky end. I've seen him stabbed, shot, chopped-up, blown-up, drowned, fall off a cliff, shot into space, eaten by wild animals and zapped by aliens. For pupils, Pointy seems to naturally fall into the Kenny from South Park, or the cat from Itchy and Scratchy role. So I always introduce him as my dearest friend and explain how I didn't like to see blood or gore, and how I hoped that one day, someone would have a nice ending to their animation for him. I'm still hoping.
365 Support - Question Time
I expect that most readers are now acquainted with Google Forms, if not through creating a survey or questionnaire but probably through completing one. You may not have spotted that Office 365 now includes an almost identical tool called, you guessed it, Forms. There is little to choose between the functionality of the two platforms, but if you have Office 365 in your school you are missing out in some useful integration if you use Google Forms. Here are a few advantages...
The Forms icon is always right there, just next to your webmail. Select it from the app picker.
You can choose between creating a Form or using the ability to create a self marking Quiz.
You can assign the quiz to specific classes where a link will appear automatically, or you can include them in an announcement.
Tools for creating questions are intuitive.
Building questions is easy with a clear and uncluttered interface.
Responses are readily viewed and there is the capacity to post marks and feedback to students as well as create self marking tests.
This chart records the views of a sample of visitors attending a year 6 open evening gathered using Forms.
Most questions allow you to drill down to the detail of the responses. This example has managed to collect some excellent quotes for PR publications.
If you are in a school sitting on a 365 tenancy and not using Forms you really do need to take a look.
Classroom Apps - Office for Free?
Forgive me if this is completely obvious to you, but I still talk to staff and pupils in schools that have Office 365 subscription who do not know that they are entitled to download and install the familiar Office desktop apps on their computers at home for free. It is difficult to think how teachers manage without it, or even worse, resort to buying their own subscriptions. Even more seriously, schools are supposed to support their communities, and if you are not filling every pupils' house with copies of Office 365 your are causing your stakeholders unnecessary expense or depriving pupils of opportunities to work at home. If your school is in an area of deprivation the advantages of distributing Office 365 to your community could be profound. You are after all giving a few hundred pounds of goods to every household, more than enough capital to enhance engagement of the community with the school if applied properly.
The rules are quite simple. If the school has an Office 365 Education subscription then anyone who has an email account with that school is entitled to install 5 copies of Office 365 onto home computers for free, and that includes Mac computers. The subscription lasts as long as the school email address is valid.
To download a copy simply visit your email account using the Outlook Web App and click on the Office 365 logo top left of the window.
Select "Install Office 2016" and follow the installer instructions.
Then go to the purchase page and remind yourself how much you have saved!
That's the free content, here comes the advert!
If you would like to find out how I might support your school in embedding the use of IT, please feel free to contact me. Here's my card...
